Jeff Matiash was about 2 years old when he was captivated by the spin of a baton.
He would watch his older sister practice twirling and his little hands would mimic her motions.
Judy Evans had never seen anything like it. Evans, a championship twirler herself and director of Niagara Royalettes in Niagara Falls, was amazed that the tiny child could move both hands ambidextrously through the motions.
“I saw him do everything with his left hand,” she said. “I said to myself, ‘That kid’s got talent.’ ”
Since then, Matiash has rarely been without a baton and dreams up twirling moves when he’s sleeping. He has the developed the unusual ability to twirl four batons at one time.
“The more batons you give him, the better he is at it,” Evans said.
He’s long past the days when his friends would tease him for his obsession.
“I just kind of ignored it, and now they’re really proud of me,” he said recently during a practice in the parking lot at Niagara Falls High School.
His obsession paid off recently when Matiash made the top three among male competitors at a national competition at Notre Dame University in South Bend Indiana and qualified for the world competition coming up next year in Belgium. His teacher and his mom, Mary, are planning a number of fundraisers to pay for his journey.
And even though he jokes that his mother has told him, “You can’t twirl your whole life,” that may not necessarily be true. After all, one of the twirlers he’s going to Belgium with in April is Jonathan Burkin, who has made it to the finals on the national TV show “America’s Got Talent.”
Matiash, an undeclared freshman at Niagara University, hopes to teach twirling and dance when he graduates from college and maybe one day take over for his lifelong teacher, Evans, who is in her 32nd year of teaching.
It could happen, Evans said, as she has never seen anyone twirl quite like Jeff.
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