Posted 6/29/26 7:50 pm
Norm Ramil
Call it summer laziness but I think I’m moving on from coming up with a title for every blog post that somehow covers all the topics therein. Search engines, heads up…I’m just naming this piece based on the first story below.
FWIW, it’s 6-29-26. It’s one of a handful of June palindromes, where the date reads the same forwards and backwards. So I tried and quickly failed to think of dance-related palindromes. But then some random googling led to ballet palindromes:
On the other hand you can make an argument for a lot of movements being a palindrome, but hey, I’m not a technically trained dancer, and all I can focus on is that racecar spelled backwards is racecar. Anyone going to the NASCAR races in Joliet this weekend?
DEAD WEEK COMES TO THE 4TH
Dead week / no-contact week is now through the end of next weekend, having been moved from its traditional early-August dates. General thoughts on dead week can be found in a couple of last summer’s 8CA podcasts. I would just add that:
• It’s not that I’m against having a break. It’s just weird that it has to be done in such a rules-y way. No doubt, it’s an improvement over the August version of dead week / no-contact week, when the start-end dates were hazy, what actions were allowed and ok were imprecise, and ADs interpreted all of it in very loose ways. If you enjoy me in ranty mode, those podcast episodes from about a year ago are your jam.
• If it’s meant to ensure that coaches and kids aren’t overworked…then we should also look at the December and January comp schedule, and expand it back to where it was (November to March) so competitions aren’t smashed into each other over such a short period.
• It definitely feels like this entire concept is coming from problems in other sports, way back in the past.
• Teams don’t have to shut it down…coaches don’t have to run away…it’s just that athletes can’t be instructed or coached in their sport’s skills during this special (LOL) week. Does this mean that teams marching in holiday parades this weekend have to prep without their coach this week? If contact IS allowed but NOT instruction and coaching, is she allowed to fix her team’s pom sharpness while they march in the parade?
MORE THAN JUST NIU, ISU, AND THOSE NICE HOTELS
Summer camp action isn’t just for Northern Illinois, Peoria, and Bloomington, y’all. A popular location for Metro East and southern Illinois teams is the camp that runs at the University of Health Sciences and Pharmacy in St. Louis. On-the-rise Alton looks like they had a pretty good haul:
• I have hazy memories of seeing Althoff Catholic dancing their home routine there in like 2018 or ’19 back when it was the St Louis College of Pharmacy. I’m sure there’s a pic or video somewhere in the 8CA archives, but, being lazy, let me instead shout out Althoff for being part of the 97th (!!!!) Annual Red Bud Firemen’s Parade.
CUSHY CAMPS
Currently we’ve got a big camp near O’Hare, and last weekend we had a posh camp (well, I mean, anything not involving dorm rooms is posh, right?) at East Peoria.
• Teams at this one included Glenbard West, Joliet Catholic St Francis, and others. A few years ago I dropped in on this camp’s home routine night and enjoyed seeing a variety of teams together — it was JCA for sure that night, possibly Downers South (?), and definitely Princeton, who I was hoping would turn a good camp performance into an upstart comp season.
CAR WASHES: THE COMMON DANCE TEAM DENOMINATOR
Car washes are one of the most shared commonalities among teams. Big or small, trophy-laden or just happy to have a team at all, a car wash is a great team-building and fundraising activity for pretty much every kind of dance team. After like 10 years of dabbling with the idea of coming to a showcase, parade, car wash, etc, I finally visited with the legendary Lake Forest Pips at their car wash a couple weekends ago:
• No cap, it was the ultimate car wash weather. You’ll get to hear a couple interviews with members of the Lake Forest Dance Team in an upcoming podcast episode. In keeping with our content theme of The Pom Summer, I’m thrilled to point out how this top program excels at both the lyrical-contemporary-jazz thing AND pom, and have brought both to the national stage. Nice folks to hang with, PLUS the team somehow knew every word of THE summer jam of 2005, Gwen Stefani’s “Hollaback Girl.”
• It was also eye-opening to see the team hard at work to make sure they raise funds for another push at nationals in 2027. Besides just being in awe of this amazing team, I did appreciate just how much this 2A championship team is like any other program (car washes, funding nationals, and running a pom as one of their comp routines). I like to challenge assumptions (held by myself and/or others), so the 30 minute hang and the 2 short podcast interviews were fantastic reminders that these Pips are down to earth folks, even with the allure of the LF name and address.
• PLUS: the 8CA hometown connection… Those who scroll through the IHSA directory or who’ve seen the nationals videos might have noticed that LF’s head coach is none other than a former assistant at Glenbard South. Congrats to Coach Winebrenner on a stellar coaching career so far!
THEY TURNED MILWAUKEE AVE INTO A POM ZONE
So just before driving to Lake Forest, I got to see another amazing 2A program doing the summer thing, this time in a parade instead of a car wash. We started the day by picking out a good spot on Libertyville’s parade route, relaying that location to Coach Casey Dugan, and waiting as 20 groups / businesses / teams passed by. Props to the stilts walker and the dude working the giant wheel thingie that you sometimes see at NBA halftimes.
• The team got to our spot, changed front to right (forgive my Civil War drill manual language…it’s almost Gettysburg anniversary time, y’all!), and dropped an energetic pom-kick routine. I kinda wanted to tell the people around me about how esteemed this program is in the world of 2A.
• Libertyville was a pretty good pom-focused program back in the day, and it’s cool to see them so enthusiastic about this style in 2026. I’d venture to say that these full-out pom facials came in handy during this past season’s masterful jazz routine (or vice versa, like a chicken and egg thing). Anyhow the point is that the two styles can definitely feed into each other.
CLINIC #1: SUCCESS!
Thanks to everyone who danced with us on June 19th at Lyons for our first clinic of the summer. We had dancers representing a range of Chicago and suburban teams and experience levels — all in LT’s spacious downstairs dance room. The dancers were great at matching Maddy’s vibe and also tossing her some smart questions about college dance team preparation, being a student athlete, and the mental side of the whole process.
• Bonus: in the room, off to the side, was THIS:
• OK, that 2026 hardware pretty much covers the full range of comp circuits available to Illinois dance teams: IHSA, IDTA, and a nationals trophy. I want to thank Lyons Coach Brittany Smith for helping us run this event, too. Tidbit: throughout the spring, that big 3A trophy resided at her house before it made its way to the dance room.
NEW COACH!
City of Chicago teams have made their presence known in Illinois’ dance team scene — a definite phenomenon of the 2020s. Payton often runs two dances at comps (a pom and a lyrical), and this season they’ll be under a new head coach:
• Congrats to Coach Buena and her Walter Payton College Prep dancers!