The Vintage Twirler preserves and shares the history, culture, traditions, and legacy of baton twirling and majorette performance through education, storytelling, archival preservation, and advocacy.
Please join the Baton Twirling Preservation Society.
The Vintage Twirler preserves and shares the history, culture, traditions, and legacy of baton twirling and majorette performance through education, storytelling, archival preservation, and advocacy.
Join the Baton Twirling Preservation Society.
How To Explore the Vintage Twirler
The Vintage Twirler offers four ways to explore, understand, and preserve baton twirling history.
Website
What happened?
Discover biographies, photographs, historical research, timelines, champion lists, and archival discoveries from the world of baton twirling.
HoopLa (Free Substack)
What’s new?
Stay up to date community news, historical curiosities, exhibits, announcements, and noteworthy finds from across the twirling world.
HoopLa Plus (Paid Substack)
Why does it matter?
Explore deeper analysis, historical interpretation, long-form features and opinion/commentary.
Baton Twirling Preservation Society
How can I help preserve it?
Subscribe to HoopLa! It’s $5 a month and every month you’ll get a sticker of the Vintage Twirler of the Month!
All free HoopLa subscribers automatically become members of the Baton Twirling Preservation Society.
See Collections
We are building an archive of baton twirling images and stories from the 20th Century. ollections featured on this site are only partially complete. Those with red stars have content.
Share Your Stories and Pictures
Support and celebrate the rich history and heritage of baton twirling through the collection, preservation and online display of historic materials. Help add to the historical record of a sport underreported and poorly documented by mainstream media.
Unfortunately, lost in the mists of time are stories and pictures. Without ever being interviewed, baton twirling heroes and legends pass away. Lost forever are the viewpoints, perspectives and even eyewitness accounts that shape the historical record. As such, the documented history of twirling becomes limited or inaccessible and priceless photos and ephemera are lost, stolen, trashed and/or destroyed, etc.
Posts Memorials and Tributes
Memorials are for the dearly departed. Tributes honor the living. We invite you to publish a free memorial or tribute honoring someone who has impacted your journey in the sport of twirling.
Thank you for allowing the legacies of those who have gone before us live online and inspire others to give selflessly to this sport.
Thank You
Thank you for helping preserve the history of baton twirling. We are preserving photographs to understand what our lives have meant and sharing your stories to gain a deeper understanding of experiences.
We invite you to share your stories and pictures with us. No story is too small, no photo too grainy.
Top Photo: Bettye Lou Sorrells (1936-2022) leads the Gilmer Buckeye Band down Buffalo Street, Gilmer, Texas, 1953. Photo Credit: Growing Up Gilmer
Most Recent Posts
Paulette Braun: Circus Twirler, Wire Walker and Photographer
Omaha native Paulette Braun was a baton twirler, juggler and wire walker who performed with the circus and appeared as a halftime entertainer with the Harlem Globetrotters before beginning a second career as a professional animal photographer. Braun performed during...
Carolyn Brown Shrewsbury: Acrobat, Majorette and Gymnastics Pioneer
Long before Carolyn Brown Shrewsbury (circa 1942-) began teaching generations of young gymnasts, she was the youngster onstage doing the things that seemed nearly impossible. Brown, who grew up in Maryland, began performing as a child in the 1950s. Photographs from...
Billie Mahoney: From Baton Twirler to Dance Legend
Billie Mahoney once lost a baton in Korea. She was standing on a hill entertaining American troops during the Korean War when she tossed it high into the air. A strong wind caught the baton and carried it into a river about 50 feet behind her. Fortunately, she had...
Vintage Ephemera
Baton twirling ephemera refers to things like programs, posters, patches, stickers, magazines, newsletters, and other things typically written or printed that were used for a specific period of time.
Submit History
We welcome high-quality scans of your vintage baton twirling ephemera. You can also receive items through the mail. We’ll digitally preserve your memories in high-quality scans. Thank you so much for supporting this project.