And back to show choir...

So this weekend was a very exhausting weekend for my show choir, Happiness, Inc. We all arrived at school yesterday at 6:30 in the morning, and we got on the charter buses at 7:00 to leave for Urbandale, Iowa which is two and half hours away. As soon as we got there we started getting settled in our room and checking out the school. The theatre was amazing, with a balcony that had been specially made for music and acoustics. The whole school was new, and everything looked really nice.

The competition for us was Ankeny, Linn-Mar, Johnston, and Waukee. These are all great show choirs, with Ankeny ranking 1st nationally according to the Show Choir Rating System for 2008. Earlier in this season, we had beaten Ankeny and it was a great success for us. We couldn't believe that we had beaten the number one show choir in the nation. At this same competition we had also beaten Waukee and Johnston, but since Linn-Mar held this same competition, we had no idea how we compared to them (except for the Show Choir Rating System for 209 which had Linn-Mar at second and us at fourteenth going into the competition). So we were pretty anxious competing at Urbandale. We wanted to prove that us beating Ankeny at the Linn-Mar competition was justified and worthy, and we wanted to prove that we could beat Linn-Mar. Linn-Mar and Kennedy have always had a friendly competition between them, and we've always wanted to beat one another.

So we performed at 4:50 and everyone seemed to feel good about the show. We had a pretty good critique (the time when a judge from the panel comes and talks to us about our show and how we can improve it). The critique said that he loved our show. He thought it was amazing. Then he went on to tell us some things that we needed to change and fix. He said that we needed to work on our diction in the second song, our emotion in the ballad and the fourth song, and our cleanliness of our moves in the last quarter of the last song. So we had some things to fix for the night round- the finals.

Day round awards came next. Our prep group-Protege- won first in their division. They were all extremely happy, but most of Happiness was only worried about their results. For the day round, Linn-Mar suprisingly got fifth, behind Waukee and Johnston, fourth and third respectively. We got second for the day round behind Ankeny. We were behind them by five measly points. We knew we had to bring it during the night to beat them.

So we tried our best. We, I mean most of us, really got focused on our show. We wanted to put on the best show possible, and hope that would mean we would beat Ankeny. So the show came and gone, and we all thought we had done a pretty great job- except for the ballad which had some intonation problems. In the end, Ankeny ended up receiving best vocals and best choreography, which made them Grand Champions and us second. However, I wasn't that dissatisfied. Coming into this season, before Linn-Mar, Happiness had no intentions of ever beating Ankeny. They are basically show choir gods, so we didn't even think we had a chance of getting close to them. Yeah, beating them was really cool, but we should've realized that our expectations had to start all over again after Linn-Mar. They were a new group, a revitalized one at Urbandale, and they showed it. However, I'm a very proud of Happiness' accomplishments this year. It's amazing how well we're doing. My expectations have been reached and what has happened is beyond all of my goals.