Eight Beauties And A Beat

The debut of the new halftime outfit wasn't entirely smooth. No one had bothered to actually try dancing in the tops, which were made of a slick, shiny material, so when the group first wore them at a women's basketball game, there were some problems with slippage. "We did a move in which our hands brushed across our fronts," recalls McCarns. "When I looked down, my top had come down so that part of my bra was showing. Julie's had come down even farther, and she didn't know it. The crowd in front of her was going crazy. When I looked over at her my eyes bugged out. The-next time we wore them we pinned Julie's top up so high she didn't want to wear it."

Eventually Hayek overcame her reservations, and the song girls went on to have a good year, especially when they were away from home. "Usually we get a better reaction when we go away," says Hazel Bracey, "because at Pauley they're so used to us. At Indianapolis last year we got a standing ovation at both halftimes. When we came out. people really clapped! At first it was a little intimidating; the magnitude of the reaction kind of made you go. 'Omigosh!' You got the feeling maybe they had seen something like us on TV, but not right there. And they were amazed."

Amazed, aroused, you name it. Indianapolis had never seen anything quite so unusual, and no one wanted to miss even an instant of it. "It's like really embarrassing to go out there and dance and see people looking down at you with binoculars," says Hayek. "I mean, I'm sure! You do not need binoculars to watch a basketball game."

Even after her great success at the NCAA finals, Hayek wasn't certain of retaining a spot on this year's squad. There is a two-year limit on participation in the program, and with six of last year's song girls trying out again last spring, nerves were strained. "We all felt they were waiting for one of us to fall on her face," says Bracey. "The rumors were going around that Julie or I wouldn't make it because we're both tall and have brown hair, and that Melanie wouldn't make it because another Oriental girl was trying out. I found myself worried."

Each spring a selection committee of about 20 students, faculty and staff members and alumni choose from more than 300 applicants after watching the girls do mandatory pompon and jazz routines, and then creations of their own. The judges grade each applicant and submit a list of their scores to an advisory board for a final screening. In past years the top seven girls then received letters from the selection committee informing them they had made the team. But last year something very strange happened. When the seven letters went out, they didn't go to the applicants with the seven highest scores. When Renée Gibson learned that her scores had been higher than at least one of the girls who had been selected, she protested to the assistant vice-chancellor, and eventually proved her case, resulting in a squad of eight song girls this year.

"There's corruption at every level," says Bessee, who tried out for the squad for two years before finally making it. "My dancing hasn't gotten any better in the last few years. It all depends on how many blondes they're looking for that year, and whether they've got their minorities filled. The second time I tried out, I'd just been Miss Santa Monica, so I knew how to do things like makeup. I came in looking very discreet, with my hair pulled back, and I didn't make it. Last year I wore a leotard hiked up high at the thighs, piled on the makeup, wore a pushup bra and a gardenia in my hair. They ate it up."

And who wouldn't? Yet for all their smoldering coed sexuality, the UCLA song girls exude an almost radiant whole-someness, a lit-from-within kind of warmth and humor that no Dallas Cowboy or Los Angeles Laker cheerleader can compete with. "We really enjoy being out there for UCLA," says Hayek, who turned down a chance at a screen test with Paramount to be a song girl this year. "I told them that that and my education came first. Besides, who would want to leave UCLA. This place is, like, heaven."

And they are heaven's choir of glittering angels: just don't ask them to sing.