Graduate School Proves to be a Dream Come True for Featured Twirler Faith Barrett
From the time seven-year-old Faith Barrett found her mother’s battered baton in the garage, she was hooked. Barrett began baton twirling at her local YMCA and the medals and trophies stacked up as she continued to compete, including state and national championships.
Baton twirling is a discipline that combines gymnastics and dance while using a baton or batons. Performers who twirl batons are called majorettes, and they often perform with marching bands. Majorettes are expected to demonstrate both technical skill and artistic expression.
The Southeastern Conference (SEC) has a storied and rich history in football. Marching bands, many of which feature majorette lines and featured twirlers, are a celebrated tradition throughout the SEC. A native of San Diego, Barrett caught glimpses of SEC football Saturdays, and a dream took hold – to become a member of a majorette line at a SEC school.
In high school Barrett won national and world open championships in her specialty of three batons and with the title of All-West Regional Miss Majorette in 2019, seemed well on her way to making that dream come true. Then the Covid-19 Pandemic hit and prevented Barrett from traveling to visit colleges. She enrolled closer to home at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).
Barrett’s dream of twirling in the SEC remained, and she had a plan to make it happen. Taking an accelerated path through her undergraduate studies would allow her to pursue graduate studies at a SEC school and audition to become a majorette. She earned her undergraduate in public affairs in three years while performing as a featured twirler with the UCLA Bruin Marching Band.
In April of 2023, weeks before she graduated, Barrett flew to Knoxville to audition to become a featured twirler in the University of Tennessee’s Pride of the Southland Band and applied to graduate school at the Howard H. Baker Jr. School of Public Policy and Public Affairs (Baker School).
Serving as a youth ambassador for the City of San Marcos and working in the Parks and Recreation Department in high school, she developed interests in urban planning, social welfare and policy. With an undergraduate degree in public policy, the newly established Baker School was the perfect place for Barrett to chase another dream – to work in local government.
Barrett was selected as a featured twirler and enrolled at the Baker School in the Fall of 2023.
“It was a culture shock, but in a good way,” Barrett said when asked what it was like coming from the West Coast to East Tennessee. “The atmosphere here is completely different. The student body is like nothing I have ever experienced. The students here make the University what it is.”
“Performing at those football games, the experience, even thinking about it, gives me chills.” She says she still gets nervous butterflies, from the excitement.
While the lure of Big Orange football traditions met her expectations, she says her other opportunities have even exceeded those. “It ended up working out where I was able to do research at the University and everything fell into place perfectly. I feel like this is truly where I was meant to be,” Barrett said.
Barrett balances two graduate courses a semester with 20 hours a week as a research assistant, plus majorette practice with the band four times a week. That is all in addition to game days on Rocky Top. Her research, with Robert Kelchen, professor and department head at the College of Education, Health, and Human Sciences’ Postsecondary Education Research Center, focuses on higher education institutions’ graduate studies, new master’s programs and how much students put into college versus how much they get out.
Game day at UT is a thrill for Barrett, but her favorite part is marching through campus with the band as a part of the pregame activities. When the band gets right outside the stadium after its winding horizontal route through campus, it stops briefly for the majorettes’ to take center stage with the “Salute to the Hill” routine and their batons dazzling the thousands of Vol fans who have assembled for another treasured football tradition, the Vol Walk.
As the featured twirler in her final year, Barrett will have solo and highlighted performances with the band, and she promises there will be flaming batons before the end of the season. On the academic side, she is looking forward to completing her research and degree and returning to the West Coast, where she hopes to combine her education and experiences together to work in event planning for her local parks and recreation department.
And that seven-year-old with the battered baton, she’s pretty proud of where her twirling has taken her. When she steps out onto the field, she can feel the ground shake beneath her. “When Rocky Top is playing, and you hear all the fans singing, it is one of the coolest things I’ve ever been a part of.”