Cheshire baton twirler hits national heights

BY MARK JAFFEE From the time Meryl Campbell was 3 years old, she was a little dynamo with flair for the dramatic and a twirling baton in her hands.
But as prolific as she would soon become as she got older, Campbell still had her moments of mishaps as she practiced hours a day in her Cheshire home. Broken windows, cracked walls and marks on those walls were occasionally the results.
“I would usually be practicing in our living room, and you could say that my dad (Joseph) was pretty good at fixing stuff,” mused Campbell.
Those erratic tosses have become a thing of the past for the 17-year-old Cheshire High senior, who wowed the partisan Rams crowd during football halftime festivities at Alumni Field at the Maclary Atheltic Complex on Friday nights.
“That means to the world to me to perform in front of people in my hometown who I value and are so dear to me,” said Campbell. “I am able to make them smile. They see my performance and go, ‘Wow.’ That’s incredible for me. I’ll see my friends along the track and glance at them and that is an amazing feeling to share that with them.”
Does Campbell ever get nervous?
“I’m always nervous. It’s all about preparation and showing you care and have passion for what you do.”
Though she has toured the U.S. for a better part of a decade, performing at such places as the TD Banknorth Garden during a Boston Celtics game when she was only 9, Campbell still admitted to being a little in awe-struck.
“I was with my baton team and had a few solo routines,” said Campbell. “I was looking around and seeing all of the fans and was just amazed. I was definitely the youngest and smallest person on the court that day.”
But Campbell was able to have a cherished memory that would help propel her to becoming and accomplished baton twirler, so good in fact that she captured U.S. and world championships over the past decade. Although she has performed at UConn games, Campbell has yet to perform at the XL Center in Hartford, a venue she hopes to be at this winter.
After training in Bristol for a few years, and other Greater Waterbury area clubs, she has settled in with the Gangi Bay State Strutters, under the direction of Tracey Gangi Johnson, who has taught baton twirlers for 29 years.
The facility is in Woburn, Mass., nearly two hours from her home. With the football season ended, Campbell will train twice a month on the weekends with Johnson.
In October, Johnson recently organized an Ambassadors of Good Will tour in Peru, and Campbell was one of 12 girls throughout the U.S. representing the sport.
“Meryl is a very successful competitor and an excellent leader,” said Johnson. “In our trip, I saw firsthand that quality. I was really impressed as her coach, but also as a chaperone. Meryl wasn’t the highest-ranking baton twirler or didn’t win the highest number of awards in the group, but got everyone moving together with the process. She took the bull by horns and made everything happen.”
With graduation seven months away, Campbell is figuring how she can include twirling with her aspirations to becoming a surgical nurse.
Of her top college choices right now, Drexel University in Philadelphia and Purdue University in Indiana, are among the early favorites.
“Purdue truly embraces the sport of baton twirling,” said Campbell.
Is it hard to get people to consider baton twirling a sport?
“You have to be a conditioned athlete with the proper mindset as well,” said Campbell. “You need to do a lot of cardiovascular work to run across the field. It’s a dedicated priority to mix twirling and my studies together in college. I want to be a well-rounded person.”
That she is.