Jaguar Feature Twirler Earns Spot on Team USA
Posted on August 12, 2026
The search that brought Nevaeh Green to the University of South Alabama took about 30 seconds. As a high schooler, she typed in a simple query: colleges in Alabama with feature twirlers.
Most college marching bands in the state have majorette lines: synchronized groups built around precision. But feature twirling is about individualized choreography, harder transitions and tricks that stack up to five batons at once. It is Green’s sport and her passion.
South was the most prominent of the few schools in Alabama that fit her criteria. By the time she graduated from Cullman High School in north Alabama, she had accepted the University’s twirling scholarship — a $7,500 renewable fund, by far the highest in the state — was South bound and ready to take the field.
Now a rising sophomore, Green has already given South a reason to notice her back.
At this summer’s National Baton Twirling Association Championships at the University of Notre Dame, she won the show twirl title, finished in the top five nationally in multiple events and earned one of a handful of spots on Team USA, which will represent the country at the Inspiration Cup World Baton Twirling Championships in Italy in March 2027.
Green had competed in the nationals twice before, but always as an individual. This time, she wore her South uniform and performed to the Jaguar Marching Band playing over the arena speakers.
“My main goal was to represent South on the national level,” said Green, who is majoring in elementary education in the College of Education and Professional Studies.
Her show twirl routine, a no-drop performance set to “River Deep-Mountain High,” was the event’s showcase category, built for personality as much as precision, featuring multiple batons and illusions — feats she once thought she could never pull off.
“I just wanted to go out there and have fun with it,” she said. “Hearing the crowd cheer after you catch a trick, seeing them have fun with you was really encouraging.”
When officials read the Team USA roster and called her name, the moment caught her off guard.
“I didn’t really expect it, and I wasn’t prepared to hear my name,” she said. “It was almost just a breath of relief. It felt like all the hard work had finally paid off.”
That work started at age 9, when her mother signed her up for classes at a studio in Cullman. She turned out to be a natural. A decade of practice followed, much of it in her backyard, where her family would have to call her in for the night.
Over the summer, preparing for nationals meant four hours of daily practice and strength circuits.
“I had to start disciplining myself to practice just the weekdays, and on the weekends I would give myself a break,” she said.
Green trained at South’s new Geri and Gordon Moulton Jaguar Marching Band Complex with Michaela Rader, the program’s feature twirler coach, before leaving for Notre Dame.
This fall, Green returns to South, balancing classes and marching season alongside fellow feature twirlers Sydnee Cantley and Lily Hatchett. She will devote Mondays, the band’s one day off from rehearsal, to prepare to take the world stage.
Jaguar Marching Band Feature Twirler Nevaeh Green practices the timing and technique
behind each toss. Here she performs at the new Geri and Gordon Moulton Jaguar Marching
Band Complex.
