CAR WASH WEEKEND, BADGERETTE COMES TO ILLINOIS, AND LATE ON THE 808
Posted 8/11/25 8:30 pm
Nothing says first day of school like mid-summer real-feel temperatures! I can just hear that corn growing…
Quick pom tosses:
This weekend was a car wash takeover across the state! I got to hang out with the Warren Devilettes and their new varsity head coach. More car wash thoughts later this week, but let me give credit to the Devilettes for taking on this challenge with enthusiasm:
We’re already seeing a few tryouts posts for fall season. This isn’t just for teams who played it cool during spring and summer. Sometimes you just need another tryout to beef up the halftime roster. You might get a new herd of interested freshmen and transfer students, too. Or there could be those kids who had an inspired summer at their studio (or took some TikTok and YouTube deep dives) and want to get in on the fun of Friday nights. And I hear that sometimes ADs recommend or require their halftime poms teams to run an early-fall tryout.
It’s official, per IHSA — fall sport practices start today.
If you’re not into abbrev., that’s boys football / golf / soccer / cross country, and girls golf / tennis / cross country / volleyball / swimming.
Absent from the list is anything about fall / non-competitive / halftime dance and pom teams. That’s because it’s an activity and not a sport, per the IHSA competitive dance FAQs:
So your fall / halftime / non-competitive team could exist 365/24/7 and tryouts could happen, like, whenever, and however many times. Another way to look at it: you could’ve run halftime practices last week, even led by your coach, because after 11:59 on August 10th, she or he became just an advisor of halftime poms.
In terms of pom / dance, nothing really started today because there was nothing that needed starting because nothing ended because a halftime dance team doesn’t have a season.
The only thing that has ended was the summer window to work on competition choreo, which ended at 11:59 on Sunday night, August 3.
I’ve been known to misidentify and mis-name the classic turning C jump, especially in the heat of the moment at comps! If that skill could use some polishing, check out the 8CA stories from today for a reposted tutorial on drills and exercises to nail that…wait, what’s it called again?
Here in Illinois, most teams pick UDA, and, increasingly, DTU, for their summer camp experience. Other states have their big camp companies, like Minnesota’s Just For Kix. In Wisconsin, Badgerette has a chunk of the summer camp market. There was a time when some Illinois teams went the Badgerette route, most notably Crystal Lake South long ago.
Badgerette just ran their big annual event, the Midwest Grand Championship, and it was here in Illinois at two sites over the weekend (Elgin and Schaumburg). And this was JUST after they hosted a small comp at the Wisconsin State Fair.
I wonder if they knew that one of Illinois’ dance team hotspots was nearby (the Fox River Valley teams of Batavia, Geneva, both St Charleses, and South Elgin)?
Deep dive / deep plie:
I totally forgot to mention on Friday’s post that it was 808 day! You’ll get way more of this in the next podcast drop, but here’s the best job I can do on a short 808 explainer.
+ It’s a drum machine made by the music equipment company Roland, manufactured from 1980-83 (so no, it wasn’t a success in its time). Technical name: the TR-808.
+ You build a beat by arranging its onboard drum and percussion sounds to create full drum parts for a song. The sounds weren’t meant to be realistic-sounding, and there’s only 16 of them! But those unique sounds are its identity. The 808 palette had synthesized claps, snare drums, hi-hats, and kick (bass) drums, along with some other percussion sounds.
+ By the mid-‘80s, the 808 drum sound was all over pop, R & B, and hip hop hits. Throughout the ‘90s and ‘00s, it was THE drum source for hip hop tracks. You didn’t even need an original unit — plenty of plugin emulations exist, or you could even just use the recorded sound hits to come up with an 808-style beat.
+ In the 2000s and through today, with pop and country being so influenced by hip hop, you also hear the 808 drum sounds across different genres.
+ In the 2010s and ‘20s, music producers figured out that you can take the low kick drum (or “sub bass”) from the 808 and alter the pitch to make a hybrid bass / low drum part in a track. This is what most people think of today when the term “808” is thrown around. Think car-window-rattling power, and you’re probably hearing an 808 bass.
+ Other 2010s and ‘20s 808 trends have been to glide that deep bass sound, and to program fast hi-hats in slow hip hop tracks, sometimes with triplets:
This playlist is dripping with real-life, classic pop examples of the 808 in action, from ’80s pop to ’00s southern hip hop.
This playlist shifts forward to 808’s next-level sub-bass era — it’s raw, sparse, creative, and just all-around extra:
Today’s random pic: Every year for sectionals I try to guesstimate what time awards will hit at the different sites. Here’s my hasty sketch while sitting at the Libertyville sectional. My formula? Time of scheduled last dance + 6 minutes to run the routine and finish judging + 10 minutes to get the results into the announcer’s hands.
