8 Things About The Early ’21-’22 Season So Far

Still digesting Thanksgiving dinner and yesterday’s cold sandwich leftovers? Need a break from deciding how to max out your credit cards? Let’s chew some early-season nuggets.

Someone asked me if I’ve seen any surprises so far this season. I reflected for a sec and honestly came up with this insightful answer: “Not really.”

Amazingly, not a ton has changed since the last time we all filled these gyms for competition days back in January and February of 2020. The big name teams still look formidable, November synchro and technique is shaky as usual, and it’s just thrilling to check out the new dances of the season. So here’s a high-calorie sampler of some things I’ve been seeing and not seeing during the first couple comp weekends.

1: Realistic, low-hype scores

In the past, some of the November scoring has been legendarily hilarious. These days, they more sensibly match 2 things: what really happens on the floor, and the true arc of a season. Lemme elaborate. In the not-too-distant past, certain team names dazzled you as you read their name on a November competition lineup. You’re way stoked to see them, and you fully expect them to invigorate your love of team dance after all those crowd-pleasing halftime routines on football fields in September and October. They step on the floor, do their thing, and give you exactly what you’ve been hoping for. Overwhelmed with awesomeness, it’s easy to assign a lofty score. So it used to not be surprising to see a few low and even mid-90s on the scoresheets. In November.

Fast-forward to the polished, tweaked versions of that routine in January. Somehow, that same dance gets a similar (or an even lower) score to what they earned in November. Besides the obvious scoring system issues that this reveals, it just doesn’t follow the realistic storyline of a team’s season.

But here in the young 2021-22 season, the top 3A routines are running in the 85-90 range. A dazzling 2A dance, clearly on track for Day 2 at state, raked in a mid-80s score. The scoring range this season just feels a bit more sensible and reliable. 

2: Hot starts

All your faves look terrific right out of the gate, and they still have lots of room to grow–Stevenson, Geneva, Andrew, Minooka. Not everyone’s a fan of dancing for points in November, but when you’ve got the talent and the choreo, you might as well start early and figure out what to work on. So these teams didn’t shock, but they’re already on pace to lift some large trophies at the end of January.

If any team’s on fire early, it’s Barrington. They’ve got the high score in 3A so far (a modest 90-something), and their routine makes the biggest impression among teams in their class. Other teams like Jacobs, Antioch, Mahomet-Seymour, and Vernon Hills look very ready to be in the sectional trophy conversation. Then there’s this other group where I just want to put the actual scores aside and declare that they look on top of their game overall: teams like Sandburg, Wauconda, and Neuqua Valley. I gotta highlight Glenbard West for the most notable week 1 to week 2 improvement (modestly in the points, and very visibly on the floor). And JV? Crystal Lake Central and St. Charles North look scary good.

3: Changing trends

OK, I bet many students are taking a very casual approach to any homework or studying during Thanksgiving break. Imma do the same, at least stats-wise. So for #3, I’m going mainly with the eye test, or how things just LOOK, without double-checking the videos and notes.

I’m feeling a slightly lower emphasis on those changing spot turn sequences. They’re in there, but the rest of the dance makes it look like a team isn’t counting so much just on the points from those changing spots. The sense I’m getting from these early season dances is that choreo is more designed with several captivating moments throughout the dance, instead of just 2 or 3 do-or-die skills moments.

It looks like more teams are backing off on joining the jazz club. A couple programs who I felt did a super nice job exploring that side of dance in recent years have gone back to their pom roots and looked excellent over these first couple weekends. And continuing a trend that sparked to life 2 seasons ago and then really blossomed last year, we’re seeing less of the intense, cinematic-sounding, intimidating dark jazz style. Like aerials and lifts, these can be superb but they don’t pack the punch that they once did. In fact, I feel like I’ve seen more of the straight-up emotional lyrical and contemporary style, much like what we saw during last season’s virtual competitions. That vibe is pretty impactful in person!

Lastly there’s the increasingly popular strategy of bringing complex, wildly-layered routines to the floor and focusing on the visual impact at first, and then cleaning it up as the season moves along. These routines are impossible to perform cleanly in November, and I think many teams just accept the fact that it’s going to look messy at first. It’s a strategic trade-off: look sketchy for now, but grow into the choreo later, which was designed to be intricate and has a flurry of expressive movement in each 8-count. It looks like more and more teams are coming out in November with this plan of attack.

4: Fitting in nicely

This one’s short but totally worth its own point. The newcomers to higher classes? They’re mostly doing just fine. Teams like 1A champs Providence Catholic, Burlington Central, and Mundelein understandably faced quite a challenge in moving up to a higher class. But as Montini has proved in recent years, legit talent tends to do well when faced with this legit problem. The early season impression is that these teams are on the right path to dancing in Bloomington even though they’re suddenly facing more formidable opponents.

5: Rusty? Not so much

Best case scenario for any team: all of varsity, which is ideally made up of all juniors and seniors, have competition floor experience from the 2019-20 season. Not that many teams have this best case scenario going for them. Look out on the floor and you’ll probably see a good chunk of the team without previous comp day experience.

Luckily, most teams have had enough performance and practice opportunities over the past 18 months to look good in a live competition situation. Any fears that a year of virtual competitions would dilute the product on the floor just hasn’t turned out to be true. If scores are lower overall, it’s due to the revamped judge training instead of rusty dancers fumbling through a routine.

All teams, from top to bottom, pretty much look like what you’d expect in November during the IHSA era.

6: Coaches and upperclassmen deserve lots of credit

Now the other side of the #5 coin is that being new to comp day is really hard. And having so many kids on the team that don’t know what it’s like to dance in this setting is challenging to say the least.

Based on what I’ve seen at the comps so far–good to very good performances–this means that coaches and experienced upperclassmen are doing a fantastic job of getting their rookies up to speed. And the sophomores who are new to hearing the words, “You may begin your performance” or “the floor is yours for competition” are doing great at adapting quickly. This might be the most impressive aspect I’ve seen so far this fall across the entire dance community.

7: Folding up the rubric, stuffing it in my pocket

Way before the final placements and scores came out, I knew after seeing these early dances that so many teams deserved shoutouts for putting together good routines and delivering solid performances. Set aside scores for moment and just think of what you see right now from a team compared to 2 years ago. Programs like Plainfield East, Benet, Prairie Ridge, Taft, and West Chicago spent the past 2 to 3 seasons showing lots of promise, and here in the ’21-’22 season, those long-term efforts are paying off. Of course each of these teams has a different scoring storyline going on, but what they have in common is this: hard work pays off, and sometimes it takes several seasons.

Some of the most entertaining, most competitive showdowns are happening in that 75-80 range. As the top 3 to top 5 become more and more predictable, I think fans and dancers are going to start appreciating the excitement further down the list. It’s getting easier to just ignore rubrics and placement rankings because these mid-pack teams are putting together excellent performances that are clearly at a higher level than, say, 3 years ago…despite what the points say. 

Today’s 78.5 routine looks wayyyy better than 2018’s 78.5 routines. A scoring / system flaw? Totally. But the fans get the benefit of mid-pack routines that are quite compelling to watch and root for. If you come home with an 81, in the past, you’d use the “meh” emoji to describe your day. Now? I think you’re entitled to go ahead and order the cheese fries.

8: Not the post-COVID era yet

I mean, yeah, if you zoom out, things look relatively safe-ish. Most folks have masks on. There’s always the distracted dude wearing the chin diaper, or the hungry dancer going to town on a tray of nachos, but these are pretty sporadic. A little luck and some strategic seat-choosing can help you stay safer, but just looking around the bleachers, you couldn’t possibly call this situation reasonably safe. We’re driving without seatbelts on and the airbags turned off.

I’m kind of willing to roll the dice in the bleachers, but when we’re all outside the gym doors waiting to come in between performances, there’s no hope of social distancing. Zero.

On a positive note we have to give credit to contest hosts who run more than one awards session throughout the day. This results in fewer people in the gym and in the building. And I’m so grateful for the comps that have streamed their events. I don’t think this has hurt ticket sales that much. The comps seem almost as well-attended as they did in November of 2019. And if streaming has affected revenue, there’s always the option of charging the viewers. And if the cost of streaming is a concern, we’d love to sponsor your broadcast!

Circling back to how I started #8, I can’t help but be happy to spend my winter weekends with talented athletes and artists, watching the tradition-rich sport that first hooked me in high school. Being back together is an amazing reminder that dance team as a sport isn’t about just a score earned over 2 to 3 minutes of skills recitation. It’s about the competition day experience when you’re mingling with other teams who love it as much as you do. It’s about legacies that go beyond your 4 years, team names and trophies that date back well before 2012, dance styles that’ll influence teams for decades to come.

Whether we realize it or not, the only way we know how to do this thing is full-out.