Rico, Around the World, Ferris Wheel, Cliffhanger — for most, these seem like random words thrown together, but to the Aggie Wranglers these are the “jit” moves performed in their routines that leave the audience in awe. 
The Wranglers, whose goal is to promote the Aggie Spirit through their distinctive type of teaching and performing country western dance, is an exhibition country western dance team established in 1984. 
To become part of this elite group, which currently has 18 members, there are months of preparation with a partner and then a tryout process broken down into two parts — a morning session to test dance skills and an afternoon interview.
“This is to test if you’re a good fit for the athleticism involved on the team and understanding the style that we’ve taught in lessons and see that you’ve absorbed enough information, are ready to learn all of our routines over the summer and have the intense training summer to get ready to perform and be that highly-trained professional caliber that we expect from the team that maintains our reputation,” said Trey Whitaker, president of the organization.
The Wranglers said they met their partners in different ways, ranging from knowing each other at Fish Camp, meeting through mutual friends or  by using a “partner search” on the Wranglers website. 
Whitaker said the Wranglers travel and perform around the country and teach lessons to support its travel costs. With the semester closing the team will be traveling to Disney World to perform.
“We also function under the donations of the various people we perform for that lets us travel all over the city, state and world, spreading our love for Texas A&M through our distinctive style of country western dance,” Whitaker said. “Previous teams have traveled to Germany, Japan and the Texas A&M branch in Doha, Qatar.”
Lauren Roverse, biology senior, said the team has four routines ready to perform at any time.
“Our routines are passed down from team to team, so it’s actually been a very long time since we’ve had a new routine choreographed,” Roverse said. “So each year the previous team teaches the new members all of the four routines we have and then they keep passing them down.”
The Wranglers spend an intensive summer preparing for the upcoming year. The team meets on Saturdays for the entire day, and during week days couples are expected to practice together. Spencer Chance, university studies senior, said the amount of hours put in during the summer can be overwhelming.
“On Saturdays, it’s literally an all-day affair. You start at 8 a.m. Some days we didn’t finish until 6 p.m. and that is just straight dancing, straight physical exhaustion, mental exhaustion,” Chance said. “Because we perform anywhere and everywhere, we have to be ready to have stamina to dance for however long.”
Jessi Gorman, telecommunication and media studies junior, said during a performance the Wranglers will perform a dance routine together and then each couple will have the opportunity to show off a few of their best “jit” or freestyle jitterbug moves.
“In all of our performances, we usually do two routine dances and then we’ll have a jitterbug line which is a solo line, so every couple will go out and do a set of three jitterbug moves, with transitions, together,” Gorman said. 
While Wranglers are best known for their dancing, Bailey McCreary, mathematics junior, said over the past couple of years they have worked on becoming more of a leadership organization as well.
“Back in the day, it was always about dancing and there was no real structure to our team and so we created what we call B.O.O.T.S. — Building Our Organization To Success,” McCreary said. “So some of those Saturdays where we’re not learning routines, we’ll do an eight-hour workshop of team building and developmental structures and strategies and stuff like that so we can function better as a team and benefit the school by creating leaders and not just dancing.”
Brayden Sievers, agricultural systems management sophomore, said the organization has helped him grow in his year as a Wrangler.
“That’s what I really love about this,” Sievers said. “I’m sure it happens with pretty much any organization, but it’s just nice having an organization that cares about something I do as much as I do, and then being able to also build as an individual.”
Amy White, human resources and development junior, said when it comes down to it, the Wranglers are a group of people, more like a family, who love to dance and spread their love of A&M.
“Once I’m off the team that’s what I’m going to miss the most, just being able to dance,” White said. “I love our routines that we do and that’s definitely been what’s kept me going, the dancing and coming together as a team to dance.”