GROOVERS SHAKERS : Suited up like jocks, they’re ready for ‘battle.’ But the competition here is dancing to house music. Unlike the raves of yesterday, these bashes are done with city permits.

Sporting a yellow nylon gym jacket and red gym shorts, Orange High junior Salina Guerrero psyches up for battle. She plucks a grape Blow Pop from her mouth and bites her bottom lip. Her mouth twists enough for her to hurriedly bite the tiny hoop threading her lip, making sure for the umpteenth time that it’s still there.

Next to her stands Maria Camarena, a Los Amigos High senior this fall. Her color is navy, and her mascot is anything Mickey Mouse as evidenced by the plastic figures laced into her Pumas and the half dozen heads of the rodent’s likeness stuck on her ears.

Salina, 16, and Maria, 18, won’t be going against each other tonight, however.

As true-blue gal pals, they never would. Nor are they readying themselves for some clash of the jocks. Salina’s platform sneakers aren’t exactly permissible equipment on any court or field. Neither one of them cares much for sports. They just dress as if they do.

The athletic wear--actually a hodgepodge of pieces from various sports--is the uniform of their culture as groovers. “Doing battle” means competition, but the activity of choice is dancing. The electronically hypnotic, sometimes bombastic sounds of house music serve as their soundtrack.

Though no one can say for certain when groovers emerged, the elements that define them are not new. They are, in fact, just a scene by another name. Nearly a decade ago, house fans crammed into warehouses and other unconventional spaces around the world, dressed in gym wear, especially anything by Adidas, and T-shirts and accessories depicting “Sesame Street,” Dr. Seuss and Disney characters. Their parties were called raves, and they were one-night celebrations in the name of technology, peace and the global community.

The raves dwindled, especially in Los Angeles, as police became more savvy on how to bust them. Most were, after all, held illegally. Gangbangers also crashed the party, having no concern for the message of unity and peace.

It’s doubtful that groovers have had as much of an impact internationally as of yet. But all signs indicate that this is a regenerated, if not slightly revamped, version of rave culture that began taking shape a couple of years ago. As for when it decided on a name, no one can guess.

On this night, like tonight and every Friday night, Salina and Maria are at the Sound Factory, the weekly house fest at the Tunnel in Orange. The all-ages nightclub is hidden in an industrial park near Anaheim Stadium, but for all its appearances as something hush-hush and underground, it’s city-approved and has all its permits.

The bar sells slushies in 15 flavors for $2, conventional sodas for $1.75 and coffee for $1. There is no alcohol. On a nearby table, Blow Pops sell for 25 cents. Also available are beaded necklaces with happy faces or plastic whistles and T-shirts featuring “Sesame Street” stars.

Above Salina and Maria, on four screens, Disney’s “Aladdin” flickers in all its glorious color. Giant, fluorescent Dr. Seuss-like fish rock, catching the strobes and spots of light beaming through the darkness of the club.

“I used to listen to funk and old school and go to house parties and all that kind of stuff,” Salina screams over the music. That kind of music proved too homogenized though, she says. Besides, her mom used to listen to it. “House is always new. It’s my music.”

She says she favors music without vocals. It interrupts the flow of the music sequences. When it’s pointed out there are occasionally vocal tracks layered over some pieces, she doesn’t seem to hear.

“I love the music,” she continues. “Oh my God, it’s just so beautiful. I love the weird noises. Right away I want to dance.” Salina has been a regular of the Sound Factory since January. She belongs to Crazy Entertainment, a party crew mostly made up of groovers and identifiable by laminated cards they wear around their necks that look like backstage passes.

Not all groovers belong to crews, and crews don’t necessarily have to be made of all groover members. Though some party crews end up in violent situations, groovers are into peace. They are neither taggers nor gangbangers.

“Some dance crews are just old cholos who can dance,” says Chris Komek, 20, of Santa Ana, a veteran here tonight because he has been grooving longer than all of them--a little more than a year. “But they can’t handle being burned on the floor so they instantly want to fight. But that’s mostly in L.A. I haven’t seen many fights in O.C. Older guys like myself try to keep it from happening. Nobody wants to see a fight. What’s the use?”

Anyway, that’s not a groover’s style, they say.

“Being a groover is about staying off the street,” says Ray Ray Sanchez, 15. He, too, is a member of Crazy Entertainment. Tonight his short, combed hair is sprayed with gold glitter. His Levi’s are cut off just below the knee; as a distinguishing mark he’s stuck Band-Aids on the knees of the pants, which are held up by suspenders over an AYSO jersey. His ringed athletic socks are pulled up to meet the ends of his pants. As for the neon-green laces on his white Converse sneakers, they are supposed to be left untied.

“I used to just go out wherever and come home late,” says Ray Ray, who lives in Fountain Valley and will be a sophomore at Los Amigos High in September. “I still come home late, but my mom knows where I am. She feels safe about where I am and who I’m with.”

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Salina and the other county groovers meet at Sound Factory on Friday nights, a house party on Saturdays and Reality nightclub in La Mirada on Thursdays. If she had a car, Salina says, she’d hit the Los Angeles scene more often.

Her 11-year-old brother loves her lifestyle, and she has brought him to Sound Factory on a few occasions. Her parents don’t care for the lip ring but allow it as long as she keeps up her grades.

She met Ray Ray and Maria through Komek, Maria’s boyfriend of one year and eight months and the leader of Crazy Entertainment. He also promotes house events under the crew banner. Maria heads the Bratz, an all-girl crew. Salina is the only girl in her crew. It’s because she dances so well, like a guy dances, she says.

Beyond the gym gear and the sneakers and the glitter sprayed into their neat hairdos, dancing is the ultimate form of expression among groovers. So it’s paramount that each one has his or her own style. “If they copy you,” says Salina, “it’s like, ‘Can’t you think for yourself?’ ”

The dance has an inherently primitive aspect to it by the way groovers get caught up in the repetitive sequences of the music. Guys form a circle and take turns flexing their skills in the mush pot. Lady groovers stand on the outside of the circle usually, mostly bending at the knee with a studied bounce. The guys’ wacky attack of doughy, jerky moves looks a lot more fun.

“I used to be the only girl to dance in the circle,” Salina says matter of factly. “I guess it’s because I hang out with a bunch of guys and can dance like them.”

If this all sounds like a slightly sexist setup, consider that it’s pretty typical among teens to gang together by sex. Girls cluster together over here and watch the guys who have clustered over there.

Besides, a girl can get a better view of the guys from the periphery, noted one dancer.

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Doing battle is usually split by sex too. Guys battle guys. And the young women battle each other. The duel takes place by each one taking a turn with his or her best moves. The crowd determines the champ.

“If I see another girl, I have to battle her,” says Salina. “We don’t fight, though. We shake hands. I get mad easy, but I’ve learned to shake hands and let it go.”

Ray Ray lives to go dancing. “I love showing off my skills. When I get home, I’m so exhausted I go to bed. I don’t even change out of my clothes,” he says dreamily.

“You can’t just dress the part and call yourself a groover,” he adds. “You have to dance.”

An AYSO shirt, a cheerleader skirt, baby barrettes and a stuffed animal backpack doesn’t instantly make you a groover, agrees Maria. She wears her hair in tight little buns on the side of her head and pinned with tiny barrettes. Metallic stars and hearts sparkle off her cheeks.

“Other girls take part of the look and incorporate it into their own thing,” she notes. “But they aren’t groovers.”

Nor are those who throw on the gear only when they go out. These part-timers are tagged “Friday night groovers.”

Komek says being a groover is a total lifestyle commitment.

“It’s a style of dress, of dancing. It’s about always outdoing someone else [in the scene]. It’s about expressing yourself in a nonviolent way. The better you dance, the better you are. We’re not a bunch of cholos who want to start fighting like the police think. We’re all colors, and we’re for peace.

“Groovers dress the part 24 hours a day,” he adds. Yeah, well, except when life as a field agent for an attorney’s office requires him to leave the polyester Adidas pants and vinyl backpack at home.

For high schoolers such as Salina or Ray Ray, who have a few years before they have to compromise with adult reality, being a groover is possible 24-7.

“My mom thinks it’s cool,” says Ray Ray. “My dad thinks it’s weird. But my mom just tells him it’s the ‘90s.”