Twirlmate Turns 1! - A Year in Review

Amazing things happen when you set big goals and take consistent, small steps to achieve them every day.

April 10, 2025 was World Baton Twirling Day. It was also Twirlmate’s official 1st Birthday! One year ago, I introduced the baton twirling community to a central hub where they could find information about contests, groups, and coaches across all organizations. 

Since launching in 2024, Twirlmate has featured registration information for over 240 contests, clinics, and Twirler for a Day experiences in 34 states. From across the country, 85 groups and 32 coaches have created public profiles, and almost 1,700 people have created accounts for themselves or their athletes.

The response from parents, coaches, and athletes has been overwhelmingly positive. The site’s event calendar, which displays both event dates and registration deadlines, is a big hit. One parent recently described it to me as a “game changer!”

This past weekend, Twirlmate reached its biggest milestone to date by supporting the 2025 NBTA Pennsylvania State Championships in true end-to-end fashion.

What does that mean? Instead of navigating a number of separate sites, forms, apps, or papers to complete their entry, 170 parents and coaches used ONE online system to find the contest, register nearly 250 athletes and teams, pay the entry fee, and receive a confirmation email—all in a matter of minutes. 

Over the past year, I introduced a number of new features to the platform that allowed the NBTA PA States staff to offload many manual tasks to Twirlmate. As a result, they were able to focus on creating the best experience possible for athletes and their families.

Twirlmate helped them automatically calculate the 576 trophies, medals, ribbons, and plaques they would need for this year, schedule 1,153 performances in 3 set systems, and print 1,339 contestant scoresheets along with 310 master scoresheets (in performance order for each lane!). 

As entries came in, Twirlmate automatically created the divisions and emailed receipts after each payment, so they didn’t have to manually process each entry or type up confirmation emails.  For printing scoresheets, Twirlmate had all contestant and division names ready to go, allowing them to skip the steps of typing and applying labels to each piece of paper. And when last-minute division changes came up, Twirlmate helped to resolve them with the click of a button.

But the benefits didn’t stop there. During the contest, the tabulation team used Twirlmate to calculate results for 247 divisions and publish them online in a special portal for attendees to see. The same portal also presented parents and coaches with a personalized view of their athlete/team’s performances, as well as the contest’s complete schedule.

One parent who used the portal shared, “As a mom I LOVED having the set numbers and lanes done for me. All I had to do was print it! Easiest process ever in 9 years of twirling. [I] loved not frantically highlighting a cumbersome book looking for her lanes. And my twirler likes having it electronically on her phone. Seriously well done. Kudos!”

I’m deeply grateful to PJ Burkin, LeAnn Chamberlin, Ashley Usui, Barb Friday, Tricia Baldridge, and the many other dedicated parents of The ShowTwirlers and Passion Twirl and Poms for the opportunity to support the 2025 NBTA Pennsylvania State Championships. Your hard work and dedication delivered a stellar experience for parents, coaches, and athletes, and it was a pleasure to be a part of the process. Thank you for your thoughtful and open-minded collaboration, and willingness to try something new.

Finally, just as it takes a village to host any baton twirling event, so too has it taken a number of key supporters to bring Twirlmate to its current state:

• In November 2022, Susan Usher, Lynne Harrison-Ley, and other Saline Twirlette parents/athletes piloted the system’s registration functionality for the very first time with a 20-person mock contest.

• In early 2024, Sandi Weimers, Niklas Strid, Jeff Johnson, and Rachel Johnson provided invaluable insights into the vast organizational differences/needs of our sport, which turned into features that will help Twirlmate support baton twirling at all levels of competition.

• In August 2024, Michael Harris-Jump’s Trick or Twirl Tournament and "Get a Grip" Clinic 2024 became Twirlmate’s first official contest to use the online registration functionality, helping to smooth out the sign up process for parents and coaches.

• And from November 2024 to March 2025, Sherri Deeter-Scott managed her innovative Triple Crown Contest series through Twirlmate, bravely and patiently testing out new features such as the set system generator and scoresheet printing as they became available.

• At each of these steps were also many passionate parents, athletes, coaches, and judges who provided both praise and suggestions for improvement, navigated a few technical hiccups, and put the system to the test with increasing rigor.

Thank you to all of you for being technological twirling pioneers, for shaping Twirlmate into what it is today, and for inspiring its future direction.

And of course, none of this would have been possible without the support of my incredible husband Carl. Your encouragement helped me to push through the early mornings, late nights, and long weekend hours to reach this point. Whenever I encountered a new challenge or faced an unfamiliar piece of the process, you were there to listen, problem solve, and help me find a way forward. Thank you, and I love you with all my heart.

To my parents Patti and Jim, sister Emily, and close friends Geo and Porscha, thank you as well for your support and positivity. It has meant the world to me, and I love you all very much.

Looking ahead, I couldn’t be more excited about the future of Twirlmate and its potential to revolutionize the world of baton twirling. Whatever your role in the sport might be, if you’re interested in learning more, I invite you to email me at [email protected]. 

Here’s to an incredible first official year of serving the twirling community, full of learning, growth, and great accomplishment, and many more to come. 

Happy Birthday, Twirlmate!