Had it not been for the Federally mandated Title 9 program authorizing equal support for girls sports, this would be a monumental year for a Sandpoint High marching group. I read in this morning's "50 years ago" historical account that a drill team was forming at the high school, with Mrs. Plastino as its adviser. Of course, I noticed the article because, for nine years from the fall of 1969 to 1978, I served as adviser to that same group.
As noted in the first story of my new book "Ponderettes and Pie, Not a Good Mix," the only way I got out of advising that drill team was to announce the upcoming birth of my second child. That would be Annie, who turns 29 this Friday. If I recall correctly, Betsy Walker, the French teacher then and Kootenai School principal now, took over.
I was not all that eager to advise the drill team, but being a rookie teacher I knew enough back then to say "yes" rather than the "no," a word I'm still having a difficult time mastering in my retirement. To have refused Dick Sodorff's generous but desperate extracurricular job offer back then would have spelled doom to a 22-year-old new kid on the SHS block, especially because my boss had been my principal in high school. I knew not to cross Mr. Sodorff.
So, of course, I said "yes" to the generous $200 stipend and an extra duty that would continually test me and would push me beyond limits I ever thought possible for an overweight klutz, totally devoid of musical or marching knowledge.
Lots of bad things happened during my time spent as Ponderette adviser. I had to break up fights. I got speeding tickets while trying to make the 7:30 a.m. practices almost every morning of the school year. The band teachers who had to help coordinate our music were never very cooperative. Ponderettes could also be hyper-hypersensitive, snippy, and sneaky (I still remember surprising the smokers grabbing a few puffs behind the gas station when we did a pit stop on our way to the Wenatchee Apple Blossom Festival).
Early in my career, when a drill went sour, my overweight similarity to what high school girls and boys "a cow that needed to be turned out to pasture" made underground paper news headlines at the high school and additional journalistic fodder for months thereafter on the local radio and within in many traditional newspapers statewide. It still hurts to write about that situation nearly 40 years later. We had a few other disasters with the marching routines, but in all those cases, our best performance ever always followed, as it should with any trip to the bottom.
Ponderette responsibilities never stopped. For that $200, I worked the entire year, except for a few weeks in the summer after the Fourth of July parade and before football drills started. Advising the Ponderettes also involved having some seamstress skills. I had none. Thank God for parents like Jan Meneely and other students like Carleen Hamann who stepped in with their sewing machines and creative minds as 35-40 sets of accessories to the traditional white Ponderette uniform changed with each drill. And, since the sleeves, pompons and other extras changed each time, we were constantly fundraising to pay the bills----Rex soap sales, candy bars, drill team sponsorships, variety shows, etc.
Granted, the down side of Ponderette advising did take its toll, but I also benefitted from my association with the group. Most cherished are the lifelong friendships that spawned out of the years of getting to know the girls and considering them like second family. In fact, when Willie was born and I continued advising, we joked that he had 40 aunts. There was fun associated with the group too. In fact, I could never stick with any school activity very long if fun times didn't accompany work times.
Eventually, I started learning some of the finer points of successful routines and the secrets behind a snappy drill team. The most crucial element accompanied everything we did: SMILE. I even vividly recall the day we were practicing for a parade, marching down Pine Street. I was walking backward at a fast pace, facing the team, constantly reminding them to "smile" when smile big time they did as I rammed full force butt-on into the back of a car parked in my pathway. The girls enjoyed that one.
In those later years, we even won some awards at parades, and, overall, the pride of being a Ponderette and being associated with the organization far outshadowed those painful moments.
As the girls' sports programs at Sandpoint High School continued to grow, the interest and the elite feeling of being a Ponderette eventually diminished. Also, precision marching eventually gave way to dance routines. I think the drill team kept going until some time in the '90s. Now, it remains but a memory in the minds of many women who can look back at their SHS football and basketball halftime performances and parades with great nostalgia.
I'm glad Dick Sodorff asked me to advise the Ponderettes, and I'm glad I was too stupid and too scared to say no. Had I done that, there would have been no real reason to SMILE when I saw that history note in this morning's paper.
3 comments:
Were you a member of the drill team at the junior high? Mrs. Cross was our advisor.
I never would have made it into drill team with my ample figure. That's why I found it so strange that Dick Sodorff would ask me to advise the group. But he was desperate.
Now, Betty Cross was a close family friend of ours. My folks used to do lots of horse stuff with Bill and Betty. I also had her for a teacher and always admired her. They later moved to Walla Walla, where she worked in a J.C. Penney's, I believe. She and Bill died long ago.
Who you be????
I don't remember being svelte in my size 14 black tight skirt!! Mrs. Cross was one of my favorite teachers.
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