Some New York City police officers who have worked at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade for 20 years had never seen anything like the 56 Scarborough kids who unicycled down Broadway last week.
They said that to Gym Dandies Children’s Circus Director Jon Cahill as the parade, including the unicyclists, wound its way past 2.5 million people watching from the streets, in buildings and from rooftops. Millions more got a brief glimpse of the group on national television, right before a commercial break.
“It’s really cool to be in it, it’s like you are a really important person too,” said fifth-grader Ashley Ronzo, who has been performing with the Gym Dandies for three years.
Scarborough High School senior Dana Bennett, who has been with the group for nine years, said the Gym Dandies were behind the Sesame Street float, but felt all of the eyes were on his group, which has also been in many parades in Scarborough and around Maine, as well as appearing twice in the National Independence Day Parade in Washington, D.C., with a third visit slated for July 2006.
“I think we got a lot more cheers than Sesame Street,” Bennett said. “It was definitely an amazing way to top off all the wonderful experiences I’ve had with the group,” he said.
The six-foot-tall unicycles provided the students with an excellent vantage point to see the throngs of people lining the street and they could see the crowd’s reaction to the routines they performed.
“People loved to see us ride the unicycles and were so amazed,” said Elizabeth Beliveau, a sixth-grade student who has been performing with the Gym Dandies for about four years. “They were all screaming. I was so proud.”
“It was fabulous,” Cahill said. “The crowd just loved the kids,” who rode the parade’s two-mile route in about an hour.
The Gym Dandies are a unique student group and easily stood out from the numerous floats, balloons, and marching bands that normally appear in the parade.
“What makes them really special is their age and sheer number of kids that can perform these skills,” Cahill said.
One of the biggest challenges faced by the group was remaining in motion when the parade stopped, which occurs at various stages so featured performers can sing or play in front of television cameras.
But the Dandies’ twice-weekly hour-long practices at the Wentworth Intermediate School parking lot in the early morning, dedicated to various formations and pivots paid off and the performance went smoothly.
“It was exciting,” said seventh-grader Rene Quinn. “We did the simplest things and everyone cheered.”
The biggest challenge of the day occurred at the very beginning of the parade, when the students had to mount the unicycles within a few minutes to begin the parade.
About the only problem they faced during the parade was running into the occasional pothole, which often led to a student falling off a unicycle.
“I fell one time,” Bennett said. “I just hit something and I was down before I knew it.”
However, several parent parade walkers who accompanied the group assisted the downed students get back on the unicycles and continue along the route.
The months of training and in some cases years of experience paid off and they were able to ride down Broadway without any major problems.
“They did real well,” Cahill said. “They held up real well.”
The Gym Dandies riding down Broadway during the Macy
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