The family joke is that when Ashley Dolan was born nearly 16 years ago, she emerged with a baton in her tiny fist.
Her mother, Anna Osborn Dolan, spent 10 years as a twirler for the Denver Broncos. And Anna Dolan’s mother, Cheryl Osborn, was a majorette who began twirling batons at age 10.
“It’s an aerobic sport that promotes physical fitness, increases flexibility and improves posture and eye-hand coordination,” Anna Dolan said.
Not to mention the snazzy uniforms, which have evolved from the gold braid-encrusted jackets popular in the 1950s to stretchy leotards that would be at home in a gymnastics meet.
Cheryl Osborn’s twirling career began in the late 1950s, when she was at Westminster High School. It was the heyday of marching bands and majorettes that inspired the hit “The Music Man.”
Now 69, Osborn remains slim, remarkably flexible and quite capable of the eight-finger roll, a deft technique that spins a baton down the fingers from one hand to another. Osborn, founder of the Colorado Twirls Baton Club, remains an active twirler, though these days, she teaches more than she performs.
A certified coach with the U.S. Twirling Association, she founded the Colorado Twirls baton club, and coaches young twirlers for the Westminster parks and recreation department.
The U.S. Baton Twirling Association has 65 members in Colorado — including both Dolans and Osborn, and an additional 250 children, some only 4 years old. They take twirling lessons and compete in tournaments.
Watching her 16-year-old granddaughter’s acrobatic twirling routine, Osborn’s expression mixes pride, nostalgia and appraisal. Twirling has changed dramatically since her days as a majorette.
“We mostly stood in place and twirled,” she said.
“Ashley moves even more than Anna did, and Anna had a lot more movement, and a lot more body work, than we ever did. The girls today! After they throw a baton, now they spin around 5 or 6 times before they catch it under their leg or behind their back.”
Born to twirl
Ashley Dolan was 2 years old the first time she tried to twirl a baton. By the time she was 4, she was competing in twirling competitions.
“I got into it partly because I grew up around it,” she says.
She stuck with twirling after other girls lost interest sometime during elementary school, a bonus when she was cast as the mayor’s daughter in “The Music Man,” in her middle school’s version of the classic marching-band musical. In the production, Ashley wore a majorette uniform — “heavier fabric, with a skirt of sorts,” her mother said — that rivaled the Westy Majorette outfit her grandmother wears in a vintage photo.
Today, twirlers’ costumes are flashy bits of Spandex. The white majorette boots are gone, replaced by featherweight beige-toned flats that resemble jazz-dancing shoes and enable balletic, high kicks.
The sport evolves
In Cheryl Osborn’s twirling days, batons were hefty metal sticks with knobs on one end. Now, batons are slim as pencils, with white rubber tips at each end, and twirlers routinely manage three to five at a time.
Sometimes the batons are on fire, a stunt that both Anna and Ashley Dolan, who’s been twirling fire batons since age 5, shrug off. Anna Dolan routinely spun three flaming batons during the 2-minute warning at the end of Broncos games from 1982 to 1992.
Flames are less important than form, the three say. Anna Dolan and Cheryl Osborn preach twirling benefits: eye-hand coordination, fine motor skills, spatial awareness, self discipline and time management.
“It’s pretty physical, too,” says Ashley Dolan, who performs competitively as a soloist and on a team with her close friend Chelsea Flaum, a junior at Arapahoe High School.
Both girls compete on the national twirling circuit. At the U.S. Twirling Association’s national championship competition in July, Flaum won first and second place in two categories, and Dolan won second and third place in three categories.
They each lift weights to keep their arms toned, although Flaum had to lay off a while after shoulder surgery. Both run sprints to maintain their aerobic fitness. During the competition season, they train from 90 minutes to two hours or so a day.
The hardest part? Sometimes it’s keeping a smile on their faces.
“Keep smiling? Absolutely,” Ashley Dolan said.
“It’s a life skill,” her mother said.
“They need to think on their feet, adjust their performance for bad weather, different audiences, uneven surfaces, low ceilings. When they apply for college, those skills will stand them in good stead.”
Claire Martin: 303-954-1477, cmartin@denverpost.com
Want to learn to twirl?
Try these organizations:
Colorado Baton Council (colobaton.org) Nonprofit advocacy organization, with information on classes, workshops and competitions
Colorado Twirls Baton Club (coloradotwirls.com) Founded by Cheryl Osborn, Anna Osborn Dolan and Michelle Dawson
Colorado School of Baton (coloradoschoolofbaton.com) Founded by Amber Lena
Ann’s Allstars (annsallstars.org) Founded by Ann Durkin, northern Colorado
U.S. Twirling Association (ustwirling.com)
National Baton Twirling Association (batontwirling.com/NBTA/Index.htm)
