Battle Royale

What’s wrong with a little friendly competition? Nothing unless is’t completely cheated. Ahh the dance team. We practice once a week on the same routine to make it perfect in order to destroy any other team that thinks they can beat us. Well, we lost. This weekend was the first competition of the season and it was The State Championships as the Prime Osborne. In case you didn’t know, competitive Allstar cheerleading has blown up in the past ten years. Unfortunately for Infinity Allstars, the team I cheer for, American Allstars has been around for a lot longer. Teams grow and expand and the judges at competitions know whose good and who they are looking for to be the best. Each dance has a theme that helps while choreographing a routine. Our coach, who is also my good friend had been hearing about the Crazy theme that American was doing this year and has been waiting for the chance to kick their butts. She cheered for American before her mom opened Infinity Allstars. Everyone’s friendly with each other, but talk about a rival. They’re Crazy, so we are from the Jungle. Yup, Jungle theme. Easy enough, we wear leopard outfits, wear vines in our hair, and dance around joyfully to jungle themed songs.

We had this competition in the bag, or so we thought. One girl even said she would jump in the retention pond across the street from our gym if we got first place. It was a two day competition. You compete for 1/3 of your score the first day, find out what place you’re in, and come back the second day either hoping to keep your first place spot, or make some changes to win if you were slacking after day one. After watching American compete we were so excited because we were sure we had it. Later we got the scores, and were livid to find out that the judges “didn’t understand our routine” and said we lacked energy. Ok, I’m not going to argue the lack of energy part, because we have some girls that need to get in shape, but please explain to me how the judges couldn’t understand a routine with girls in leopard dresses dancing around to Jungle Love and making claws and growling… it’s part of the choreography, I’m not a freak. The opening of the music says “Welcome to the Jungle”!

Needless to say we were pissed, but we stepped it up the next day and stole the show. Parents from American’s gym complemented us on how great we were. There are about six judges watching the routine and each judge’s score gets calculated to decide on the winner. Well some judges said, “Way to pull it off the second day” while others said “For a level six routine”, which there is no such thing as level six, it only goes to five… what does that tell you, “A lot more is expected”. Whatever! Anyway, I figured we lost, but I had to be at work so I didn’t stick around for awards, that way when I made it to work and people asked why I had ridiculous black eye makeup and bright red lipstick I could say, Oh I had a dance competition today, but I had to run here for work. Of course the next question is always, Well how did you do? And in order to avoid the embarrassment of saying Oh we lost to one other team, because the next questions is always How many teams did you go against, I could say Well I had to leave, so I don’t know how we did. But I think we got it!

That’s the Outer Battle.