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NOVEMBER 2021
VOL. 06 NO. 08
UHS baton-twirling team excels By EmilyAnn Jackman Staff Writer Union High School coach Nicole Marie Placca brings something unique to the school’s students: the art of baton twirling. Teenagers and even younger children can now benefit from Placca’s teachings of a sport that may seem almost extinct. Placca, who hails from Kenilworth, is also a Spanish teacher for grades 9-12 at UHS. She became acquainted with baton twirling in her youth and has been the coach of the school's baton-twirling team since 2011. “Baton twirling is a very intricate skill. It involves a great deal of fine-motor skills, hand–eye coordination and it’s a very intricate process of moving your wrists and being able to manipulate a baton, which is a skill in and of itself,” Placca said on Thursday, Oct. 7. “Just the process to learn how to do a toss properly takes months on end, and then you’re combining that skill with teaching students how to dance, how to incorporate gymnastics and then there’s also tricks that involve multiple batons — manipulating two batons at once and juggling three batons. So, it truly is a very unique, intricate craft.” According to Placca, Kenilworth had a very small school system without many extracurricular activities. Since she took twirling lessons when she was a student there, her school allowed her to join the band and be the school’s feature twirler. “A long time ago, there was a woman who was a school teacher in Roselle Park. We know her as Ms. Pat, and she ran a baton-twirling program out of a basement of a church right on Tucker Avenue in Union,” Placca said. “This woman ran this for decades ... because the girls would take lessons from her, living in Union, and then they would pretty much make up the high school team. They learned how to twirl from her. That’s where I took lessons. I heard about her and I took lessons in that private studio in Union, which is no longer running.” Placca said UHS baton twirling is one of the few teams left in the sport. “This program is really unlike the common sports that are around,” she said. “I’ve seen another baton twirler at a sporting event in my entire coaching and performing career.… We are the only school in Union County, and we’re one of the few
Photos Courtesy of Nicole Marie Placca
Above, Union Township school district students learn an elbow roll. Below, students are grouped by age and led by a member of the Union High School team, where they learn appropriate skills based on needs and readiness levels.
left in the whole state of New Jersey to have a baton-twirling presence, let alone an entire team.… There’s not many schools left that still have teachers there that can even coach it. “We’re considered a club, and I’ve taken my girls to competitive organizations that are well-known, and they compete against other private studios, where girls are trained dancers and they’ve been twirling a lot longer than a high school
team has,” she continued. “Our team has won against some of the biggest, wellknown teams, which is amazing. They’ve won six state championships in three years.... It was a really very special accomplishment for a public school club to go against these well-known teams who were more experienced and get private training.” COVID-19 made things challenging for See UHS, Page 4