When I was 14 I tried out for the pom pom corps, and that turned out to be the first step in a series of surprises.

I had no desire to march. But I was finishing junior high, looking at last at high school, and my biggest fear was PE class. When I learned that the entire corps took PE together and that most of my friends were trying out for the corps, I did too. And I even got into the preparation for tryout, so I actually tried, and then was surprised to make the corps and also to be happy about that acceptance.

Next I was surprised at how hard it was. That summer we began marching in the street outside the school, and in September we took to the football field. Those hours were the first time I experienced a persistent trickle of sweat down my back, or salt in my eyes. I remember pulling my heel high to meet my knee with each strut, guiding right even though my glasses didn’t provide peripheral correction and I was still three years away from contact lenses.

Then there was our oddity. By 1964 every other competing school in California had converted from pom pom corps to drill team. They wore tennis shoes and gloves and they goose-stepped. We polished our tasseled boots, sequined our little dresses, and rolled/cut our white tissue-paper pom poms fresh for each performance.

Finally was the surprise of our success. We took first place in the Maytime Band Review in National City, in 1965. It was at the end of a decent run; we’d acquitted ourselves well at games and in parades. But that competition was the last and biggest. We worked our bodies and our hearts for it. We snapped. We strode. And we were blessed with the experience of succeeding after trying harder than we thought possible.

We marched with our whole selves and we won. We were the only pom pom corps and the last one. The following year even our high school went drill team.