That's certainly what got me in. Also, when you're thirteen and groping toward radical politics, the shock value of saying "I'm in the Young Communist League" is probably too good to pass up.
Heheheheh I seems a LOT of people start off in the YCL because, well, the CP-USA has the claim to the official name, so people think automatically "Oh, that's the place to start". However, the turnover rate is so high, that most people move on to more progressive and theoretically-advanced trends.
I had a similar experience with the YCL, though several years after yours. Though, the relative lack of effort to get me involved probably wasn't helped when I asked on a YCL e-mail list, "What is the YCL doing to support the Fourth International?" Needless to say, I left the YCL for Trotskyism, rather than Maoism.
