Viterbo 101

Most people dread the winter in Iowa. There is absolutely nothing to like about it (aside from those rare snow days). The below freezing temperatures, having to constantly scrape ice off your car, and feeling like your hands and ears are going to leave your body makes winter an absolutely horrific time of the year. But I love it; probably along with 40 other people. Winter is the height of Show Choir season. We have competitions almost every weekend and it’s probably the only part of winter I enjoy. In fact, our competition season started yesterday in La Crosse, Wisconsin. We arrived at an ungodly time in the morning (4 am) to school with curlers in our hair and bags under our eyes. We loaded the bus and were on our way by 4:30. After a long, uncomfortable bus ride (it’s impossible to sleep in curlers), we had finally arrived! We stumbled into Viterbo University, anxious and ready to perform; but not for another 6 hours. We roamed around and watched other groups, including our schools prep group for the next couple of hours until our time to perform finally came. The performance process began. The next hour and a half was a chaotic frenzy of changing, curling our hair, make-up, warming up, and a stomach full of butterflies. The excitement, anxiety, and nervous energy in the room were potent. We couldn’t wait to perform, but at the same time were extremely nervous. We have a costume change that we have to complete in 30 seconds, and it’s very difficult to get out on time. The time to compete had finally come, and we were ready. We performed our hearts out in the day round, but still didn’t feel like it was our best show. We all knew we could’ve done better, and so did the judges. We tied for third with another school. We were all extremely upset. Our rival schools from our town had beaten us, and we wanted to do outstanding at finals. Most of us just forgot about the pressures of winning and went out there and did what we loved to do; perform and have fun. This is the reason I thought we secured our third place spot. Our show had improved so much from the day round, and this was enough of a win for us. Most of us had had our best show yet, and we were thrilled. The placing didn’t matter to us, we were ecstatic that we had managed to improve our show from the day rounds to finals and keep our third place spot.