A Peak At An Alternate 2021 Timeline, Part 2: conference competitions
by Norm Ramil, 8CA main person and dance team fan
1/21/21 12:45pm
Last time on our alternate reality January, 2021 timeline, we looked at the feels of the Monday after a comp weekend. This time let’s relive the weekday grind, including the spectacle that gets every AD hyped: dancing for the conference title!
A January practice can be a little stiff and flavorless, like a Trader Joe’s cracker. At this point, all you’ve got is your routine to clean, a set of scores that seem to box you in to your probable sectional fate, and that subtle injury that would only go away if you had the time to rest.
Hmm, how to spice things up without wasting practice time… A spirit / theme day? Maybe someone on the team has a Zumba warm-up. Or do you dare let that one freshman pick the stretching music?
Remember, our alternate timeline “Normal January, 2021” is kind of a cheesy eye-roller in the world of creative writing. We’ve gone this far, so why not add more cheese into the mix and introduce some new characters into afternoon practice. And I don’t mean that JV kid who your coach moved up to varsity this week.
Maybe your AD drops in for an inspirational speech. Or a team mom comes in to iron out the food situation for this weekend’s comp (the best moms also happen to bring cookies this afternoon). There’s also me and our wonderful 8 Count Audio staffers (I miss these visits so much here in the real 2021).
But when an alum crashes practice, the team’s collective heart gets all warm and fuzzy.
She’s like a living, breathing reminder that there’s life after this. An existence after the season’s over, after high school’s over. And for her it’s also a way to reconnect with a part of her past that’s so far away from dorms, lecture halls, and Greek letters.
There’s a big reunion, and lots of mini reunions, too. Some alums are there to just hang out and visit, but others drop by to help their old team prep for the conference competition and sectionals. She sits up front like an assistant. She’s that extra voice telling you what you already know but somehow keep forgetting. All those nags that Coach throws at you during a normal practice somehow sound fresh and urgent when it comes out of another mouth, right?
Your alum is on week four of winter break (if her school’s on the semester system), so you coax her into coming to your conference comp. It’s on a weeknight (probably), so maybe she can round up other former teammates and make your fan section that much louder!
Here’s where everyone’s alternate timeline is a little different. Conference dance competitions come in, like, every variety of format you can imagine. We’re talkin’ some on the weekends, and most of them on weeknights. A few conferences make it cheer in the morning, dance in the afternoon. Maybe you get to run two routines. Could be that your parents miss it because of a 5:00 start time, or it could be that they’re there thanks to the 7:00 start time.
You might dance on a floor that hosts it every year, where you know every single volleyball and basketball line and its color, every detail on their overdone (but still kinda cool) mascot art at center court. Or maybe your conference rotates it and you’re competing in a gym that doesn’t see much dance action at all, besides homecoming and turnabout.
Some conferences are big enough for two divisions, or maybe the ADs scrap that and opt for a winner-take-all approach (and save a couple bucks by going with one plaque or trophy instead of two).
But conference comps do have a few crucial things in common, aspects you can count on experiencing on a normal January weeknight. IHSA classes? You can put that aside tonight. If you’re 2A, you get the chance to take on that big-name 3A dance team.
Or let’s say you’re a solid 3A program but never quite manage a top 3 at a normal comp; tonight, maybe your conference isn’t strong this year and you can rightfully claim some well-deserved hardware.
Some conference comps zip by, and some feel like full-length events crammed into an evening. Either way, you might have to wait quite a bit between performances if the judges have to watch varsity dances back-to-back. So it’s not a shocker if you line up on the endline, ready to dominate the floor like champs, pumped up, fans going crazy, and…you have to wait!
Are you filling that time jamming to whatever song’s playing? Looking for mom in the bleachers? Running through that one troubling part of the dance? Or just taking in this singular moment, your chance to stamp your name all over this conference.
Out on the floor you steal a quick glance at the judges. A loud voice in your head asks, “Are these going to be our sectional judges?” For the next couple minutes, it doesn’t matter that much. You’ve got your routine, your teammates, your fans, your talent, and all that hard work, each of these feeding into this monster of a moment.
Awards look different with just a handful of teams sitting in circles or mingling with family members who, feeling the casual weeknight vibe, have drifted onto the floor. You can count on an AD or other administrator to announce which team is this year’s conference winner. Sometime’s there’s legit drama, with teams who normally don’t see each other going head-to-head. Other times, you’ll have to get your drama fix from Netflix when you get home.
If it all goes right, just right, you’re lifting that plaque or trophy at the end of the night.
There’s another prize: a score and feedback. Two more pieces of the puzzle as you second-guess your way toward sectionals…which is what we’ll focus on in part 3 of this series!
And just like that [snaps fingers, flash of light] we phase out of the alternate reality timeline and jump back into the real January ’21, where glimmers of hope are just starting to light up the darkness this week.
’Til we post part 3, keep stretching. Maybe say no to that extra slice of pizza.