And Here They Are, the Pride of White Rock—the Bryan Adams Belles!

The girls’ drill teams that keep people in the stands at halftime of high school—and some college—football games were born in Texas, and that is where they have most flourished. It began in 1928 with the Sam Houston High School Black Battalion, the first all-girl drum-and-bugle corps. The very next year, Gussie Nell Davis inaugurated a rudimentary squad at Greenville High School. Following on her heels was Kay Teer Crawford at Edinburg High School down in the Valley; her marching and dancing group supposedly “swung” a bit more than that of Davis. Things evolved quickly, however. Davis was hired at Kilgore Junior College in 1939 and started the Rangerettes, a bunch of rosy-cheeked girls dressed up in red-white-and-blue outfits with white hats. Their main competitors were and still are the Tyler Junior College Apache Belles, originating in 1947. Both groups wear flared cowgirl skirts and tassels on their white boots, moving and dancing with precision and enthusiasm. Big smiles are mandatory for the members of these drill teams. They kick, they pirouette, they strut and they do it all in a manner that is simultaneously innocent and flirtatious. One of my brothers went to TJC, and he often bragged about the Apache Belles.

It was Ms. Sparks’ baby

Deport is a tiny community in the northeast corner of Texas. Nina Belle Sparks—note that middle name—was born there in 1921. She pitched for the boys’ baseball team, started a girls’ basketball team at Paris Junior College and got a couple of degrees from East Texas State. Sparks taught for 40 years at Pattonville, North Dallas and Bryan Adams, retiring in 1982. When BA opened in 1957, she was on the faculty as girls’ P.E. teacher and director of the drill team.

I was a student at BA from late 1968 through graduation in May 1971, and the Belles were a constant presence. For all nine months, they wore their green jackets trimmed with white. I had two GFs who were members of the Belles—Nancy Sauer and Debbie Jo Hart—and I really wish I had asked them more penetrating questions about the drill team. There were 72 members during my student days, and I am told that Sparks ran a tight ship. Hair had to be short because, I think, the girls often did these quick flips of the head. The look had to be elegant but coordinated, demure but athletic.

There were tryouts, and not everybody who wanted to be a Belle was accepted. The disappointment I felt about twice getting cut from the football team was mirrored by the many distaff Cougars whose names were not on the final list. I knew one such girl, and at age 63 the memory of not being chosen still rankles.  She desperately wanted to be in, but she was out.

I hope I have made clear that being on the Belles was cherished by (most) female students. There were a few alternates, ready to step in if a girl did not maintain her academics. I assume that a “C” average was mandatory. How demoralizing it must have been to be kicked off the Belles! Another memory is as follows: A junior girl—due to be a two-year Belle, the cream of the crop so to speak—quit after having a religious awakening of sorts. She was said to have walked into Sparks’ office and told her that all this drill-team stuff was frivolous and ungodly.

I got a close-up view of its importance when Debbie (see above) was chosen. One of the writers in the 1971 humor book Senior Pub opined that becoming a Belle had caused her to undergo a “personality transplant.” This, friends, was no compliment, and she knew it. Debbie, well brought-up by her parents, unleashed a stream of profanity that would have shamed a stevedore.

Let’s admit that the Belles were also a social club, a sorority and a tight sisterhood. Who knows—maybe they had initiation rites, maybe the seniors dominated the juniors, maybe there were even conflicts or an occasional catfight. I can tell you for sure that some strange things happened among the boys during my three years at BA.

Scoggins, Reid and Ash

I do not know who else besides Sparks had input about the dance routines, the uniforms and so on. They were her thing from 1957 until 1982, and whether she was a sort of female J. Edgar Hoover I cannot claim to know. I think it’s interesting that the three leaders of the 1970-71 Belles had military titles: the captain (Karen Scoggins), and her co-captain (Barbara Reid) and lieutenant (Bettye Ash). Sixty-nine girls wore green unis, and Scoggins, Reid and Ash wore white, and had whistles around their necks.

A word about appearance. I honestly do not think that during my sophomore, junior and senior years there was a single Belle who was less than attractive. Maybe a few were borderline “plain,” but none were ugly. While I doubt that Sparks was open about this—again, I may be wrong!—the fact is that in order to be a Belle, it helped if you were cute, pretty or flat-out gorgeous. I hesitate to claim that Sparks wanted her drill team to have sex appeal. Nonetheless, it seems fair to acknowledge that the Belles did. They were nothing if not nubile.

Once you had made the team, as it were, you were put through some strenuous workouts. I remember coming to school in the morning and seeing the BA Band practicing over here and the Belles over there. I can’t help thinking that they preferred not to be seen because most were wearing ragged cutoff shorts, tennis shoes, T-shirts and even curlers in their hair. Not too girly, not the look they wanted to project during the school day—but there it was. They were doing their version of what the boys would be doing at football practice after classes, and so what if they worked up a sweat?

Fem athletes at BA

I don’t want to get all left-wing political on you, but I think the girls at Bryan Adams High School 4 1/2 decades ago got a raw deal. What kind of athletic outlets did they have? Swimming, tennis and “tumbling.” It’s a crying shame that there was no girls’ softball team, no girls’ basketball team, no girls’ track team, no girls’ soccer team. Quite a few athletically inclined girls were on the Belles, and Sparks was looking for athletes. Can she move gracefully? Is she light on her feet? Does she have good balance and timing? Can she learn to do the “BA kick”? Perhaps there were other criteria, but I surmise that looks combined with athletic talent put a girl over the top.

Our Belles were by no means unique. I suppose every Dallas high school had a drill team: the Woodrow Wilson Sweethearts, the Lake Highlands Highlandettes, the Sunset Bisonettes, the Samuell Starlets, the Hillcrest Panaders, the South Oak Cliff Golden Debs, the Adamson Leopardettes, etc.

Please permit me to pose a question. Was it necessary for the members of the BA Belles to know anything about football? They sat on the 50-yard line of every game the Cougars played, and they probably did some choreographed cheering and some of the spontaneous kind. But really, did they all know that you had four downs to go 10 yards or you turned the ball over to the opponent? Did they know that you got six points for a touchdown, one for a kicked extra point, two for running or passing it over, and three for a field goal? Did the girls talk football strategy among themselves during the game? Did they urge Bob Cowsar to take out a linebacker and add a DB when the other team was facing third-and-long? Did they question his use of Mark Beesley as quarterback and not Quincy Hill? Did they ask why the Cougars never tried an occasional halfback pass to loosen up the defense? Or maybe go for an onside kick after a score? You get my point.

The cool girls

Nancy, of whom I spoke earlier, signed my ’71 El Conquistador, “Ding-a-Lings.” [After graduation, Debbie had two glorious years with the TJC Apache Belles.] This was a slightly self-deprecating term, but I knew she was proud to be on the drill team. I think it applies to every one of the Belles. I would submit that the female cheerleaders (Cindy Geldmeier, Pam Hall, Kathy Downer, Jennie Ferguson and Kellie Dearing) might have preferred to be on the drill team. Sure, there were more of the Belles, but the shows they put on were classier and much more aesthetically pleasing than any of the silly high-jinks the cheerleaders (and their male counterparts Paul Korkames, Terry McCullar, Steve Estes, Billy Joe Morris and Paul Low) did on the sidelines and onstage at the pep rallies. Make no mistake—the Belles were the cool girls at Bryan Adams.

Our alma mater has gone through a lot of changes in the ensuing years, many for the worse. Large-scale racial disturbances took place when busing started in September 1971, and European-American students have been rendered virtually extinct. Enrollment is down, and 87% of the students are “economically disadvantaged.” More than 1/4 have limited ability in the English language. Gangs are said to control the hallways; some teachers are intimidated by the students in their classrooms. Despite periodic cleanups, the nearly 60-year-old building no longer sparkles. One of the parking lots sits empty and overgrown with weeds. The academics are atrocious, as BA is sometimes given dreaded “low-performing” status by the Texas Education Agency. It is slight consolation to realize that much the same has happened at other schools in Dallas. The Cougars have not had a decent football team in decades. The Belles still exist, but I wonder whether they have the élan we used to take for granted.