Baton Tossing Has Its Ups and Downs, but to Champ It’s Mostly Up

Though only 5 feet, 7 inches tall, Michael M. Nakauchi, 15, of Westminster, gets rousing cheers at La Quinta High School football games. And he’s not even on the team.

“I’m not really good or big enough to play football, but I probably could do well in baseball,” said Michael, a junior whose talents are in baton twirling which he displays at half time with the school’s Aztec Marching Band.

The oohs and ahs from spectators for his spectacular routines are well deserved. He has just won the Junior Men’s National Baton Championships at the University of Notre Dame, regarded by some as the most prestigious event of its kind in the nation. He qualified for the national competition by winning the state title.

He also tucked away second place in both the Junior Men’s World Championship and the National Two-Baton competition at the competition, which drew 3,000 twirlers.

Despite the accolades, life as a baton twirler--perhaps the only male high school baton performer in Orange County--has not always been great fun.

“A lot of people made fun of me and still do because I twirl a baton,” said the honors student, who started practicing with the baton in the third grade. “I sometimes feel some people are just waiting for me to make a mistake so they can laugh. But even when they do, I know they’re watching.” And that includes audiences at Lakers and Harlem Globetrotters basketball games as well as at Sea World and the Orange County Fair.

“It’s kind of nice getting the attention,” said Michael, who includes twirling razor-sharp Samoan knives, fire batons and manipulating three batons at once in his repertoire. “It makes me unique and means a lot to me because it’s something not many people can do.”

Beside requiring more than a dab of natural talent, “being good means a lot of practice and hard work,” Michael said. His baton coach, Debi Barr of Huntington Beach, who heads a baton school with 150 students, feels her prize student is nearing superstar status. “He’s gaining confidence,” she said. As a new twirling twist, Michael is practicing with a hoop baton--sort of like a baton with a Hula Hoop around it--which he said “makes interesting patterns.”

But most interesting to Michael will be his choice of college. “I’m hoping the baton will get me a scholarship to the one I select,” he said.

Richard W. Hoffman, 56, of Western High School in Anaheim, is the teacher other teachers wish they were. He has that kind of knack with his industrial arts students. For instance, industry recruits many of his students while they are sophomores and juniors, and practically all are prize winners.

But Hoffman got an award of a different kind recently, which probably shows his drive. He was honored by the Anaheim Union High School District Board of Education for 30 years of perfect attendance.

“It is incredible,” said Principal Craig Haugen. “He’s very dedicated and understands continuity is important to success in his classrooms.”

He’s also very healthy. “When I did get sick it seemed to always fall on a holiday,” said Hoffman of Yorba Linda, who has accumulated 319 days of sick leave, equal to about 1 1/2 years of teaching.

The four runners-up at the Nov. 16 Great Pumpkin Cook-off at the Anaheim Hilton and Towers will receive a Great Pumpkin cookbook. Beside the grand prize of a weekend at the hotel, the winner will receive a paid-up cooking class.

Blind people competing in a chili cook-off? That’s no big deal, said Wanda Marshall, director of the

Orange County Braille Institute in Anaheim, which sponsored the event. “What’s important is for people to ask questions about blind people,” she said. “If they did, they would find out blind people just have to be better organized to put the right ingredients into what they’re cooking.”

Donna DeLaurie, 38, of Anaheim, and Rose Block, 76, of Laguna Hills, who both found the right ingredients, will represent Orange County in the Braille Institute’s Southern California final chili cook-off Oct. 29 in Los Angeles.

Among DeLaurie’s ingredients were green chili, chili peppers, top sirloin steak and chorizo. That’s a winner.

Acknowledgments--Ellis L. Jordan, of Corona del Mar, named California director of the International Thespian Society, a nonprofit organization promoting high school theater. More than 3,000 high schools are members.