In Texas: Twirling to Beat the Band

By Bob Wurmstedt

Lisa Cording, 15, is a honey blond with a Farrah Fawcett haircut and big brown eyes. She is also so keyed up she can hardly sleep. Her hands are swollen from hours of baton twirling. The light fixtures in her bedroom and the family dining room have been smashed, victims of incessant twirling. Her mother complains that at 2 a.m. she can still hear the thump, thump of Lisa practicing her "routine" out on the patio. Lisa twirls in the bathroom, and once tried to twirl in the car.

The reason for this madness? It is just one more day until Lisa and 200 other girls from 26 neighboring high schools will be judged at a regional twirling contest run by the Texas University Interscholastic League. The league sponsors 22 contests a year, and Lisa wants desperately to earn a top rating in Division One for her Little Joe flips, reverse figure-eights and, even more important, for a combination of style, smile and sex appeal that is known among twirlers as flash. A Division One finish would mean a chance to make the Huntsville High twirling line next spring. In Texas, being on the twirling line is about as "in" as a high school girl can get. "On Friday nights when the twirlers are on the field, you just want to be out there," explains Lisa. Grins 16-year-old Robin Coburn, a tall, willowy junior who has already made the line: "It's just a big deal. And your names are announced at the games." On those Friday nights every autumn, high school football mania sweeps across Texas, consuming everything in its path. But unlike Northern fans, Texans never streak for the restrooms and hot-dog stands at halftime. They stay to see the marching band and, especially, to watch the high-strutting twirlers showing off flash, skill and baby fat in their tight, sequined costumes.

No one knows for sure why twirling is so popular in Texas and most of the South. Some say it is part of a vaguely defined "Southern culture." Others suggest that twirling is encouraged by the warm autumn weather and a lack of organized sports for girls. Some feminists argue that in Texas more than elsewhere the preferred way for a girl to get ahead is to catch a man's eye, and what better way is there than twirling? Whatever its roots, the twirling line is as Texan as Lone Star Beer and chicken-fried steaks.

Lisa has cause for worry. Only seven girls can be chosen for the Huntsville twirling line, and competition is tough. Her elder sister Susan was a Huntsville High twirler for two years. But then the unthinkable happened. She failed to make the cut. Friends whisper that she gained too much weight to make the line. It was traumatic. "It affected Susan's image of herself," says Dick Cording, the girls' sympathetic father, who is chairman of the philosophy department at nearby Sam Houston State University. As a result, he says, "we've talked a lot about handling defeat in this family."

According to Texas rules, all candidates for the twirling line must be at least sophomores and able to play a musical instrument well enough to make the school band. At Huntsville that in itself is serious business, because it means dealing with Richard Wuensche, 36, the intense, bespectacled perfectionist who directs the band. Wuensche (rhymes with clinchy) is known as The Chief, and the 175 members of the Huntsville marching band are Wuensche's Wonders. For eight years they have won the Division One rating for high school bands in Class AAA (schools with 625 to 1,300 students).

Wuensche's world is prey to minicrises. A pants zipper rips on a band uniform. A flute player is absent. A clarinet complains that the baritone sax is spitting on her. But the real plagues of Wuensche's existence are the twirlers' parents. Among his duties is the awesome responsibility of choosing the Huntsville line. Parents of unsuccessful candidates have accused him of favoritism and threatened to have him fired. Things got so bad that Wuensche no longer allows parents to attend the twirling line tryouts, which are now held behind locked doors in the gym. "They all think their kids are the best," says Wuensche. "They've spent a lot of money on them, and they don't want to waste it."

Indeed, by the time a girl is good enough to strut her stuff for five minutes at the line tryouts, her parents have quite a bit invested. Private twirling lessons can run as high as $25 an hour. A week at one of the dozen or more twirling camps that blossom in the heat of Texas summer is about $90. Stretchy costumes cost as much as $60. The batons themselves, chrome-plated steel from 16 in. to 30 in. long, are about $12.50. Twirler parents spend about $600 a year, and some begin pushing their daughters into contests before they are old enough to go to school.

"Our Susan got her first baton when she was four," says Billie Clendennen, a Huntsville mother whose 14-year-old will try out for the line this spring. But Joyce Moore, 36, whose daughter Sonia, 14, won Little Miss Houston Baton when she was five, now regrets encouraging her daughter so early. "That way they grow up too quick," she says. "Sonia never liked dolls. Kids her age bore her, and she don't like boys her own age."

Most members of the Huntsville line have taken dance lessons for years. During the summer, twirlers practice four hours a day, often sacrificing personal plans so the line can work together. As a group they attend a twirling camp for a week to perfect their struts and tosses. Following Labor Day they work on their half-time programs after school for two hours each day. "Sometimes my boyfriend wants to go for a Coke and he can't understand that I just have to go twirl," Robin Coburn moans.

That kind of dedication does not help a twirler's grade-point average, or leave much time for hanging out at the Sonic Drive-In or the Emporium Pool Hall. Almost to a twirler, though, the girls think the tough regime is worth it. At heart they are neither cheerleaders nor team competitors, they are performers, smitten with the actor's urge to hold an audience. "It's like being in a Broadway show," says Tali Haenosh, a 16-year-old senior twirler who is the only Jewish student in Huntsville High and the daughter of an Israeli doctor. "We're there to entertain." Some get hit on the head at practice, or suffer a broken nose from a falling baton. Flaming batons sometimes even singe the twirlers' forearms, but the show must go on.

For some girls, twirling leads to a college scholarship, or a career as a twirling teacher. Both are goals of athletic, brown-haired Terri Burns, 17, "feature twirler" on the Huntsville line, which means she gets to perform solo at football games with flaming batons and "Samoan swords." "I always put twirling practice before guys," she says. "I've worked a lot harder to be a good twirler than I have to get a good date. You can date guys all your life but you won't always be able to twirl."

Lisa Cording's moment comes on a Saturday morning when 22 girls from Huntsville present themselves at Willis High School for the regional contest. Starting at 8:45 a.m. the Huntsville girls, one at a time, walk nervously onto a damp, fog-shrouded tennis court. Mothers and friends watch, perched on the hoods of cars pulled up on the grass next to the court. The girls, awkward in their skimpy stretch suits, take their turns alone. One contestant carries her "good luck" Teddy bear to the court and puts it down next to the judge, John Kunkel, an intimidating character slouched in a chair. There is no music. None of the rah-rah glamour of those intoxicating Friday nights. Each girl silently goes through her routine of tosses and twirls. "You look for baton speed, coordination and control," says Kunkel as he jots down impressions. "You look at their faces for confidence. It's called showmanship. I don't know too much about it, but I'm a nice old boy." Win or lose, it's over in two minutes.

Lisa grabs her French horn and band uniform. Her mother quickly drives her down the road to the Willis High Stadium where Wuensche's Wonders are about to perform in the marching-band competition. The sun breaks through the fog just as the music starts and The Wonders in their green-and-white suits and tall, furry white helmets begin some complicated step-twos and blockbusters. Wuensche is hiding under the bleachers, too nervous to watch. Finally word comes over the loudspeaker. Huntsville has won its ninth straight Division One.

The individual twirling results are being posted in the school office, amidst a clatter of prayers, joyous shouts and cries of disappointment. Lisa is actually shaking as she pushes her way to the board, then manages a scream: "I got a Division One." That says it all. Her comment sheet reads: "Work on your control. More will be required of you as you mature." -- Bob Wurmstedt

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