A Diamond Girl feature twirler.

That's a mouthful, but it means so much to Octorara alumna and Parkesburg native Mallorie Gurel.

Twirling was in Gurel's blood. Her mom was a baton twirler, which gave her a natural interest in twirling, dancing and cheerleading when she was growing up. She started twirling when she was 9 years old.

"She introduced it to me when I was 7 or 8," Gurel said. "Then I would beg her to put me in lessons."

She eventually connected with Wendy Rhoads at Ab-Salute Twirling in Ephrata and began formal training, eventually competing in competitions. Gurel never twirled with Octorara's marching band, but she was the feature twirler in all her four years at Temple University as part of the school's Diamond Band.

"I'd say it's kind of like a mix of dance and gymnastics, kind of like a cheerleader position," Gurel said. "You're trying to engage the audience, and it's a big way to show school spirit and get people excited for whatever is about to happen."

Gurel had quite an audience on many occasions. Temple football plays at Lincoln Financial Field, home to the Philadelphia Eagles. Along with doing some of the Owls' basketball games, she also performed with the Diamond Band in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade in 2025 in New York City.

Her favorite memory from the trip was performing "Fly Eagles Fly" in Times Square.

"It was super exciting," she said. "It was the beginning of my junior year, (and) we found out they'd been sending in applications and a bunch of stuff behind the scenes. ... For so many people, that was their dream. People were crying when they told us."

Being a feature twirler is a daunting task. Gurel was accompanied by an upperclassman twirler in her first two years at Temple but was on her own to practice and come up with her own routines in her final two years.

"That was definitely difficult, but there's also opportunities to be creative and highlight what you're good at," she said. "I knew what I was good at, and I was able to highlight that in routines and shy away from what I wasn't so strong in."

Part of that adjustment was focusing on what appeals to a live audience of fans rather than trained judges with twirling experience.

"It's important to try and keep people entertained," she said. "There's a lot of little technical things that people who understand the sport could know is really cool. ... It's really understanding what people want to see and what sounds good with the music and stuff like that."

In the spring, Gurel graduated from Temple with a degree in risk management and insurance. She performed with a fellow business senior, Natalia Redzinik, in the Thanksgiving Day parade. Gurel now works as an underwriting associate at Philadelphia-based Reliance Matrix.

Other local twirlers have found success after growing through the Ab-Salute Twirling system. Pequea Valley alumna Emilie Thibeault competed at the Nations Cup and started a twirling club at Lebanon Valley College; she now coaches at Ab-Salute. Other local grads, like Kyleigh Jarvis of Pequea Valley and Alyssa Sprout of Lampeter-Strasburg, have gone on to twirl at schools like University of North Carolina - Charlotte and Penn State, respectively.

"Wendy seriously is just a sweetheart," Gurel said. "It was so special; she's amazing. I feel like they've really set me up to achieve all of my dreams."