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Alone in a crowd for the last time By
Vicky Campbell
Hail Mary ... and it's over. The final play of the final first half of the final game of the season sent 22 Utah State University football players tromping off the field to gear up for the next half. However, the excitement was just beginning for band members fidgeting from the sidelines. This would be their final performance of the season, too. Flutists, drummers, trombone players - everyone was out in force to give the 13,877 fans one final hurrah. But this performance marked more than the end of a season for the band. It was the end of an era. Lacey Jones, the only feature twirler USU has ever had, performed for the last time. In fact, no other Utah school has a twirler on its band; she's one of a kind. "In the years she's been here, she's kind of been part of our identity," said Band Director Thomas Rohrer. "She will be sorely missed." Jones will graduate from USU with a bachelor's degree in statistics in May 2001. She has twirled baton for all three of her years at USU - alone. Although she said she has always been a "ham," she still gets nervous - really nervous - before every halftime performance. "It's definitely something I've had to get used to, but it's less intense than competing," Jones said. "When you're performing in front of a judge, they're just picking apart your routine." It's different in front of a football crowd, she said. "Not everybody has seen twirl so they think anything's good," she said. Also, because twirling is unique in Utah and the West, Jones said the crowds go wild for it. The roar of the crowd is all she needs to settle her nerves and fill her with energy. "I hear the crowd yell and just bust into my routine," she said. Not only does Jones perform solos in front of thousands of people, she does it in a tight, sparkly leotard she and her mom designed. While she's a little uncomfortable being the only one on the field in a leotard, she said it's imperative that loose clothes or accessories don't get in the way of the baton. However, sometimes the elements get in the way and she's forced to improvise. She has a form-fitting, full-length costume she wears when it gets cold, but during Saturday's performance it was so cold she had to wear her warm-ups. Everyone did, including the cheerleaders. Another instance she recalled when the weather interfered with her routine was her first away game with the band. She said the wind was bad, and she was performing with her ribbon sticks - batons with colorful ribbons flowing from the ends. "I kept having to unwind them around my body." She said that was one performance she was glad nobody but her band saw. The best performance she ever had at USU was at last year's football game against Brigham Young University in Romney Stadium. "I'm not going to say I'm anti-BYU," she said, "but I'm definitely not a BYU fan." She said the BYU band director doesn't like twirlers, so she wanted to show him people like twirlers and they work well in a band. The BYU band is huge, she said. "Maybe that's why [the BYU band director] doesn't like twirlers - there's so many people." But, she said, sometimes the BYU band uses "fillers" - people holding instruments and marching but not really playing. "We don't do that for sure," she said. "I think we did a lot better than BYU," she said. "The crowd went wild. It was the biggest rush." At any rate, Jones said she was out to show up the BYU band. She did her fire routine, which is always a crowd-pleaser. Fire batons consist of what is basically citronelle-soaked cloth wrapped around the ends. Twirling fire isn't technically as difficult as other routines, Jones said, but it's a lot of fun. Some of the band members get a little nervous when she whips out the fire batons, she said. They hear the fire swooshing past them and feel the heat as she weaves in and out of the formations. But she's never had an accident at USU. It does singe the hair on her arms, though, which really smells great, she scoffed as she rubbed her arms. She said she often comes home covered in the black soot from the charred ends of the fire batons. However, Jones said she is amazed because she's still using the same cloth the batons came with. The only part that burns is the citronelle she soakes the cloth in. Jones also twirls Arabian knives, which aren't sharp but are quite heavy, she said. Jones said her roommates always joke about getting ketchup packets and pretending it's blood squirting from huge gashes inflicted by the swords. Once, though, when she was practicing several years ago, Jones said, a guy walked behind her and into one of the swinging swords. It hit him in the head and knocked him out. Some band members get nervous sometimes because Jones hooks the two swords together during some of her routines and swings them over her head. They worry the swords will come unattached and one will go flying into the band. Jones said this could never happen. She'd have to purposefully jerk the swords a certain way in order for them to become unhooked. Accidents are few and far between, Jones said. Besides being pestered by roommates with gushing fake wounds, Jones said people are always asking her to perform. "People are like, `Twirl this, twirl that' and they're just tossing me things to twirl like a dog-and-pony show," she said. But she doesn't mind. In fact, she said her nervous nature leaves her twirling all kinds of things involuntarily like pens and pencils and other odd items she picks up here and there. And it's rubbing off on her roommates. Kristen Chandler, one of her roommates, said for a while Jones and her roommates were putting together a twirling routine. "She brought up a bunch of extra batons and was showing us tricks. We really got into it for a while, but we all got busy," she said. "We were going to perform for our church sometime, but it kind of fell through." Perhaps that's because of the dedication it takes to master twirling. Jones has been twirling since she was 8 years old and took ballet lessons until she was 18. Because her high school, Taylorsville High near Salt Lake City, didn't have a marching band, Jones learned only from and competed with private teams. She said twirling isn't something a person can pick up in just a year or two. It's physically and mentally demanding, requiring not only twirling technique, but also dance and marching skills. Twirling isn't as big in the West as it is in the Midwest, said Rohrer, the USU band director, probably because marching bands aren't as big here. There is, however, a gigantic twirling team in Canton, Ohio, consisting of 400 twirlers. Jones said it's amazing to see them toss. Four hundred batons go up and come down at precisely the same time. Jones used to compete nationally and placed in the top 10 three times in a row with her team. Upon graduation, Jones will probably retire from twirling. She's hoping to go on to graduate school either in California, North Carolina, Maryland or Colorado and will be occupied with her studies. She said her cousin, who also twirls, would like to co-coach a team sometime, but Jones said she's not sure she will do that. Jones said she'd like to thank USU for being such a good audience to perform for and band director Rohrer for his support.
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