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
At 16, Baton Twirler Katherine “Kitty” Clark Left Indiana to Join the Circus
Edward Frye, a circus fan from Minnesota and Kitty Clark, August 1941, Madison, Wisconsin (Source: Milner Library, ISU) This photo has been enhanced with AI tools and software. See original below.During the late 1930s and throughout the 1940s, Katherine "Kitty" Clark...
Miss Majorette of America: Can Baton Twirling Parlay Its Ceremonial Past Into an Athletic Future?
Mazy Arizona Ruise
Mazy Ruise: From Trailblazing Majorette to Dance Industry Leader When Mazy Ruise joined the Baker County High School majorette squad in Macclenny, Florida, she made history as the team's first Black majorette. Her journey was not always easy, but it would ultimately...
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.