I am SO incredibly excited to attend this competition. As an alumnus of an attending school, I won't make any predictions (I'm a little biased) but I will say good luck to all of the competing groups! I can't wait to see all of your amazing shows and hopefully make some friends! Yay!
There is definitely an issue with Ankeny Centennial's "Project X" and "Chaos". They are listed on Competitions as separate groups, but on the Ankeny Centennial page they are the same. Can someone fix this please, or is there something that I don't understand?
Chaos is a prep group that was ADDED to Centennial's program. They now have 5 show choirs participating- 1 Single-Gender, 2 prep, and 2 varsity/mixed. Not sure why the school page only lists 4 groups.
There isn't really an issue - just a current limitation with our website as the Ankeny Centennial program continues to grow. On SCC we have classifications for advanced, intermediate, and novice mixed. That's 3 options for mixed choirs within one school. Ankeny Centennial has 4 mixed choirs - Spectrum, Eternal Rush, Chaos, and Project X. Spectrum is their flagship advanced choir while Eternal Rush has also been boosted up to primarily competing in the advanced division as well. As a result, we have both Chaos and Project X listed as novice mixed choirs which compete in the prep division within their circuit. On the Ankeny Centennial page you can still find both Chaos and Project X by clicking the drop down menu, but yeah it isn't overall the most clean look. This issue, that you're describing, is pretty exclusive to just Ankeny Centennial at the moment. It's a huge testament to Mr. Miller and that community there - they have a phenomenal arts program. It just makes it slightly challenging for us to make things uniform across all the states and regions that do this awesome thing called show choir. For what it's worth, we're aware of Ankeny Centennial not showing their choirs perfectly on their school page, we just don't have a fantastic solution at the moment. Hope that makes sense.
I know Jeff has brought this to my attention before, I just suck and haven’t found a way to deal with it yet. I’ll gladly take suggestions for a new skill level name somewhere between “novice,” “intermediate,” and “advanced!”
You could do:
Junior, Novice, Intermediate, Advanced
or
Novice, Amateur, Intermediate, Advanced
or
You could differentiate different levels of Intermediate such as Lower Intermediate, Intermediate, Upper Intermediate to where one of Chaos/Project X is lower, ER is upper, and then schools with just one or two prep groups is still intermediate and novice.
See, this is where you can tell that I've been on this site for too long
Ok I have thought about this all day and my recommendations for the classifications: Premiere Mixed, Advanced Mixed, Intermediate Mixed, and Novice Mixed. Or, Advanced Mixed, Intermediate Mixed, Novice Mixed, and Prep. For these the order would be Spectrum, Eternal rush, Chaos, and Project X.
Thanks, Ethan and Alex! The issue is that the "new" classification has to be below what we already have (for example, if we added a "premiere mixed," then every single school's highest tier group would have to be switched to this... and that isn't happening). So far, this is literally the only school we know of with four different mixed show choirs (some, like Los Alamitos, have more total show choirs, but they include all-girls and all-boys groups). "Prep" is already a common title that many schools use, so I think it would confuse a lot of people if we called their prep groups intermediate and a different school's novice group "prep" (see how this starts to get complicated?). We could add "junior" or "amateur," but I'm not sure if I'm completely sold on either of those yet (though they are heading in the right direction). I really appreciate all of the feedback on this... still giving it some thought!
Junior Mixed it is. I'm almost certain this is probably breaking something somewhere on the site that isn't equipped to deal with the first new choir type designation in a decade, but it is properly showing up on Ankeny Centennial's school page now. Let me know if you find any resulting 'chaos' anywhere else. Har har.
Friday Schedule
4:15 - Waukee South MS - Spark (Exhibition)
4:35 - Indianola MS - Side Kicks
4:55 - Norwalk MS - Sound Sensation
5:15 - Waukee North MS - Momentum (Exhibition)
5:35 - Southview MS - Dynomite
5:55 - Dallas Center-Grimes MS - Infinity
7:00 - Indianola MS - Side Effect
7:20 - Waukee Timberline - En Fuego (Exhibition)
7:40 - Northview MS - Ignition
8:00 - Johnston MS - Impact
8:20 - Urbandale MS - Pizzazz
8:40 - Waukee Prairieview - Revolution (Exhibition)
Waukee Starstruck 2018
So far, this is literally the only school we know of with four different mixed show choirs (some, like Los Alamitos, have more total show choirs, but they include all-girls and all-boys groups). "Prep" is already a common title that many schools use, so I think it would confuse a lot of people if we called their prep groups intermediate and a different school's novice group "prep" (see how this starts to get complicated?). We could add "junior" or "amateur," but I'm not sure if I'm completely sold on either of those yet (though they are heading in the right direction). I really appreciate all of the feedback on this... still giving it some thought!
