Kay Crawford; the Mother of the Drill Team

Kay Teer Crawford, considered the mother of the all-American institution of the drill team, which livens up sports halftime shows and national celebrations, has died in her Redondo Beach home.

Always cagey about revealing her age because “if they knew, they probably wouldn’t hire me anymore,” Crawford was believed to be 83.

The retired Santa Monica College educator, who also taught at UCLA and USC, died Aug. 29 of cancer, said Gayla Wolf, who trained with her in 1954 and lives in Bakersfield.

The “teacher’s teacher” choreographed shows of girls (and some boys too) numbering from a handful to--for one show in Singapore--2,000.

On less than three hours sleep a night, she put 1,268 drill team members from Los Angeles and Orange counties through their paces for David Wolper’s extravagant opening and closing ceremonies of the 1984 Summer Olympics.

Two years later, she directed her charges as they helped rededicate the Statue of Liberty.

And when she organized 287 young women to “flow down the aisles like a sea of angels” before Pope John Paul II said Mass at Dodger Stadium in 1987, People magazine rhapsodized:

“It is said that America’s only original gifts to world culture are jazz and the Broadway musical, but to that list ought to be added the modern drill team, although it hasn’t caught on in Rome or Poland yet. The nonmilitary drill team, with girls performing fancy, synchronized movements, was invented by Kay Crawford, and the papal extravaganza . . . will put the number of them she’s directed at about 1,500.”

Determined to have her creation recognized for the athletic effort it is, she campaigned until her death to make dance sport precision teams a competitive Olympic event.

Crawford arranged precision halftime shows for seven Pro Bowls, six Super Bowls and four Rose Bowl games. She drilled cheerleaders for USC, UCLA, the Los Angeles Rams and the short-lived United States Football League’s Los Angeles Express.

The guru of moving formations took her own drill teams to the Seattle World’s Fair, the Mazatlan Carnival and New York’s Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. She led them on a television special called “The Wild World of Spirit” and once on an episode of the much-loved series “MASH.”

Crawford literally wrote the book on drill teams--a how-to guide used at UCLA and myriad high schools and colleges titled “The World of Drill Team.” She founded and edited Let’s Cheer, the magazine that became the official publication of the California Assn. for Dance and Drill Team Advisors.

“Kay Crawford’s productions had a freshness and vigor which captivates audiences with her costumes, surprises and exquisite timing,” Richard Moore, president of Santa Monica College, once said. “She is an indefatigable optimist who could choreograph a team, whether six people or a group of 6,000.”

In 1968, Crawford founded the Miss Drill Team USA Pageant with 268 participants. The annual competition went international in 1981 with the entry of teams from South Africa, Australia, Canada, Mexico, New Zealand, Singapore, Germany, Lithuania and, later, Japan. The event now attracts more than 6,000 competitors.

The routines could leave Marine trainees in the dust, and the sequined costumes and such props as batons, flags and pompons could cost $2,000 per person.

A loving DI, as a Marine might say, Crawford most enjoyed teaching, instilling strong values in the girls she ordered about the field.

“I taught history through drill teams,” she told People. “If we were doing a halftime show about the Civil War, I asked the girls to research the time period. If a girl was high on drill team, she wouldn’t get high on drugs. A lot came from broken homes. Drill team gave them a family feeling. I was kind of a mother, somebody who reached out and loved them.”

Crawford was born Kay Waweehie Teer, with Cherokee and Comanche in her lineage. She grew up an only child in the poverty of Granger, Texas, where she endured drought, flood and disease. After her parents lost their modest home in the town near Austin, they moved south to Edinburg in the Rio Grande Valley, where they squatted in a succession of vacant houses, stealing watermelon, corn and peas from local gardens to eat. Eventually, they moved in with her grandmother.

It was during high school in Edinburg that Kay inadvertently started what has expanded into more than 15,000 drill teams around the world. In 1930, she made the cheerleading squad, but 90 other girls did not. So she asked the principal if she could organize them into a “spirit group”--her first drill team.

Despite family hardship, young Kay vowed to work her way through Edinburg Junior College. She cleaned toilets for money, flipped burgers for food and collected returned and damaged retail clothing for something to wear. The determined young woman went on to Baylor University and then the University of Texas.

Inspired by watching boys’ Reserve Officer Training Corps drills, she dreamed of dance drill teams for girls--and wrote her master’s thesis on the subject at USC. Crawford capped her education with a doctorate from Baylor. She was ready to teach.

The official subject was physical education, but as she always said, “I taught drill team.” Other labels for the spectacular formation routines have included dance drill team, pep squad and dance sport precision team.

“She had a do-it-yourself method of teaching,” Wolf said. “Leaning out her office window to check out our routines, she might yell, ‘Very nice, but can you get a little elevation in that routine? I’ll check back in an hour or so.’ She encouraged creativity with a deadline.”

Widowed in 1997, Crawford is survived by two sons, Jay and Kim; one daughter, Jan; nine grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren.

The family has asked that any memorial donations be made to the James H. Crawford Memorial Fund honoring Crawford’s late husband. The fund will be used to build a gymnasium at Bishop Montgomery High School in Torrance.