Every year the Dyer County softball team has an annual Daddy Daughter Dance as one of their fundraisers. Every year it’s a huge hit and around 250-300 girls always sign up to attend this dance. As a Dyer County softball player, I have an inside look at what these Daddy-Daughter Dances usually look like. This is probably our team’s most significant fundraiser so we do our best to make it the best it can be. We spend a lot of time planning, decorating, and getting ready for this dance. We come up with many different crafts for the girls to make during the dance, play music for them to dance to, have cookies for them to decorate, and we have concessions for them. Some of the crafts we have for them to make during the dance are mosaic hearts, bookmarks, heart rings, q-tip heart painting, bracelets, valentines cards, photo frames, and heart chains. We also have a photo booth, a TikTok station, a hot chocolate station, a face painting station, and a nail painting station. The girls also receive tiaras as they walk into the dance.

So, usually, the girls and dads start to arrive around 5:30-5:45. As the girls arrive, they receive tiaras before they come into the dance. Most of the time, since the dance hasn’t really started yet, the girls that get there early usually go and get food from our concession stand. For the dance, we ordered around 40 pizzas. The concession stand is where most of the parents work, handing out pizza and drinks. Then, around 6:00, the DJ usually starts going with the music and the commons are filled with little girls and their dads everywhere. Some girls are out on the dance floor dancing and a lot of the girls start going through the stations, making all the types of crafts we’ve put together. For my station, I had to help the girls make a heart chain. For this craft, all we had to have for our station were long strips of paper that were about 2 inches wide and staplers. To make these, you have to fold the strips of paper into hearts, loop them together, and staple them. The only problem we had with this station was that we went through a lot of staples and ran out a couple of times. After I got more staples and we finished their craft, the girls were happy with their heart chains.

The dance ended around 8:00 and most of the girls and dads were gone by 8:15. Whenever the dance ended, all the girls on the team and their parents helped as much as they could to get the place cleaned up. To get the commons cleaned up we moved the tables back where they were supposed to be, swept the floor, threw away all the trash, and put back all the supplies we used for the crafts. We were done cleaning around 8:45. In the end, the dance was a huge success.