Now Rudey, you know that a real sport just isn't CUTE enough. :p

How about an academic scholarship? If for some reason you get injured in a tragic twirling accident, the scholarship is *poof* gone. :(

Carnation, I twirled just for the fun of it when I was in 4th - 6th grades. Now you know I am not making light of twirling, but check out:

www.texastwirler.com

all about the girl who was UT's feature twirler for 8(!!!) years!! Yeah, she has her own web page, fan club, etc.
BTW, she's an Alpha Chi Omega.

Oooh, thanks for all the links y'all have posted...I'm about to go check them out. :)

We hope she will have an academic scholarship, of course--she usually makes straight As--and both being teachers, Mr. C and I stress scholarship strongly. However, we have found that unless you have over a 1300 on the SAT, the big state universities around here aren't gonna offer you much except loans. Therefore, we're trying to give our children every scholastic advantage--such as teaching them how to study, how to take tests, etc.--but also make them desirable to colleges in some other way. So far, it's worked with the first 3.

However--most of our daughters are tiny and probably have little hope of getting "typical sports" scholarships. That's why we're focusing on areas like twirling, dancing, and cheering.

Thank you again!

Re: Designing Women
 

YOU ROCK! i love Designing women and i loved that episode. I can even hear julia saying those words in her julia way!:D

Carnation,
On a random note, UCLA's twirler, who just graduated with me, was a Pi Phi.

She was AMAZING and yes, I believe that she did have a scholarship or some financial assistance.

Partial Hijack:

Hey Carnation,

It is a little known fact that the University of Oklahoma at Norman highly recuits National Merit Scholars (including finalists), and is often number one in the country in National and Hispanic Merit Scholars and Rhodes Scholars. (Yes, I found that hard to believe, too) There were 192 National Scholars in our son's Freshman class.

If your daughter (I assume) gets to finalist, and chooses O.U. as number one on her college list (this is NOT a committment), they generally offer at least $55,000 in stipends and fee waivers. Included is a FULL out of state tuition waiver good for five years, and a $1000 waiver on basic tuition. That is nearly a full academic ride there. Students can also get other scholarships (from O.U. or other sources) and they do NOT affect the $55K number -- in other words they aren't subtracted from the base scholarship. In theory, he actuallyl made money his first semester.

In reality, when including incidental expences, he is now at about $65K in scholarships, and it cost us about $500 out of pocket for his Freshman year. It will be slightly higher this year because of increases in basic tuition and fees -- and the fact that he took higher than a full load of credit hours -- although they also gave him another scholarship to offset them somewhat.

If you would like, I can give you a contact at their National Scholars Office.

We now return you to the "Twirling" thread, already in progress.

Wow! I was a NM finalist, and I didn't get jack from my school.

I should have gone to OU!

Why not colorguard? It's more of a team based form of pageantry. From my years of being in the marching arts it seems twirling is more of an individual activity. With guard it's focused on both team and individual effort.

Where's AngelPhiSig? She can give more info about guard.

Son had already been accepted at his top four choices, including three "highly selective" schools.

We nearly threw away the offer without opening it, because it came in a standard letter head type envelope.

We had been throwing away everything he got (tons, as I'm sure you know) from other than those four -- but for some reason Mrs. DeltAlum pulled the envelope out of the waste basket and opened it.

Thank goodness for that.

And they want to twirl?

-Rudey
--Otherwise you're pushing them into something for money really...

I was an NM Finalist too, and I got jack shee-it. I didn't really expect anything. For me, it was just another thing to slap on the old resume. I don't even think my college would have offered me anything.

I thought Georgia had a merit scholarship for all students who did over a certain score on the tests. Florida has one, and it's full-tuition (I obviously didn't take it), and there are always local scholarships that can make up for the dormitories, etc.

One of my good friends has a little sister who just started college (guess she's not so little anymore!). They realized that they would pay less out-of-pocket, and she would be saddled with fewer (or no) loans if she went to a small liberal arts private school instead of a big state school. The state school may be cheaper, but the private school usually has more money to give.