For me personally, I love a nice Single-Gender competition, especially one this stacked. I know we all love making predictions about the mixed groups, but does anyone have some Single-Gender predictions?
SINGLE GENDER PREDICTIONS:
GC:John Burroughs "Sound Sensation"
1st RU:Center Grove "Debtones"
2nd RU:Norwell "Knight Stars"
4th: Los Alamitos "Soundtrax"
5th: Danville "Contemporaires"
6th: Bonita Vista "Sound Ulimited"
7th: Petal "Innovations"
8th: South Jones "New Edition"
9th: Mt. Zion "Les Femmes"
10th:Millard West "Uptown Girls"
11th:Andover "Nothing But Treble"
What do I know? Just curious to see how close I can come!
OMG I wish I was going to this!! This Competition is going to be amazing! It would be awesome to see it live! Have fun everyone going! I can see it being unpredictable! Maybe something we dont see coming!
I don't think these can accurately represent how this competition will turn out, but this is for those who want to know.
It also goes to my point that you can't just average the awards to determine overall rank, as it doesn't take into consideration the number of times a group competed or the depth of the competitions. That being said, it is a nice snapshot of how a group performed over the year and I'm sure every group is going to be giving this last competition everything they've got!
As much as I would love to see Fairfield take this I believe their unfortunate time slot will hurt them and I think Burroughs takes it with Los Al behind them.
Best of luck to everyone at a stacked Fame Nationals.
But honestly I don't completely disagree. Granted, I'm not a huge fan of this year's JB, but still, I could see it.
Lol. Well it's obviously possible, since Los Al beat JB at least once in the past 2 years (in Cali too). Plus Los Al ALWAYS does great out of state (and at national competitions in general)...
Examples:
GC at SCN 2010--beating Burbank and Fairfield.
GC at Finale Nationals 2011.
1RU at FAME Nationals 2012 to Wheaton (GC's at all other competitions that year).
But we'll see. With 19 quality mixed groups, anything could happen really. I really feel sorry for the judges that have to process all of this. And without finals too.
For me personally, I love a nice Single-Gender competition, especially one this stacked. I know we all love making predictions about the mixed groups, but does anyone have some Single-Gender predictions?
Okay. Probably completely wrong predictions. Just for fun.
Mixed-- GC: Los Alamitos (yes, I mean it)
1RU: John Burroughs
2RU: Ankeny
3RU: Fairfield
4RU: Jenks
5RU: Danville
7th: Bemidji
8th: Mt. Zion
9th: Jackson Prep
10th: South Jones
11th: Carroll
12th: Center Grove
13th-19th: (no order)
Horizon, Norwell, Millard West, Sullivan, Keller, CR Jefferson, Uniondale
BV: John Burroughs
BC: Ankeny
Show Design: Los Alamitos
So that was really difficult...
You just want to watch the world burn, don't you?
But honestly I don't completely disagree. Granted, I'm not a huge fan of this year's JB, but still, I could see it.
I'm so proud of Shawn Miller for being asked to judge He was such a huge inspiration for me in middle and high school and really helped me find a love for music and theatre
Okay. Probably completely wrong predictions. Just for fun.
Mixed--
GC: Los Alamitos (yes, I mean it)
1RU: John Burroughs
2RU: Ankeny
3RU: Fairfield
4RU: Jenks
5RU: Danville
7th: Bemidji
8th: Mt. Zion
9th: Jackson Prep
10th: South Jones
11th: Carroll
12th: Center Grove
13th-19th: (no order)
Horizon, Norwell, Millard West, Sullivan, Keller, CR Jefferson, Uniondale
BV: John Burroughs
BC: Ankeny
Show Design: Los Alamitos
I did see that you mentioned "making finals" a couple of times and I just wanted to make sure everyone is aware that there are NO finals at this event.
Crap, my bad. I do know that. By "making finals" I meant placing top 6!
That's a very well thought-out summary, Ethan, and I personally can't wait to see all of these amazing choirs in person!
I did see that you mentioned "making finals" a couple of times and I just wanted to make sure everyone is aware that there are NO finals at this event. The thought process is that since every group has already proven themselves "finals worthy" by qualifying in the top three at their particular regionals competition, it would be redundant to have a separate finals round at the nationals event. In other words, the nationals competition IS the finals. Additionally, the mixed division goes from 1:30pm until 11:30pm (and that's assuming everything runs on time - you'll notice there is only one short dinner break), so having a finals would probably keep everyone there until four in the morning. There IS a "non-adjudicated/comments only" performance day on Friday which allows choirs to become familiar with the stage and sound system as well as receive verbal comments from the judges, but no one is scored or ranked on this day. The critique lets each group know exactly what the judges will be looking for in Saturday's competitive round.
I really hope that performance times don't hamper any group's scores... there are so many great groups all throughout the day, and they all deserve their fair shot!
GC. John Burroughs
1RU. Ankeny
2RU. Los Alamitos
3RU. Fairfield
4RU. Jenks
5RU. Center Grove/Bemidji
I think the common thought is that Powerhouse is the big favorite here. But after that, many predictions differ a lot. And for good reason.
Watching the live feeds the past two weeks from California, I've noticed something. Los Al, when they have the audience, is phenomenal. But when hey don't have the audience as much, they drop from phenomenal to just very great. At a competition this stacked, that could be the difference between first and fifth. It will be interesting to see if Los Al can feed off the audience like they did at JB's competition (because that show was fantastic).
Jenks is the biggest question mark. They've competed twice, winning both competitions. One was a FAME event, but the other was a competition with groups most of us have never heard of. Because of this, we honestly don't know what kind of "first place caliber" group they are. They could honestly finish anywhere from GC to missing finals and I wouldn't be surprised. Though I hope they do welll.
Ankeny and Fairfield, in my opinion, are two groups that have the best shot at making finals other than John Burroughs and Los Al. Both have had fantastic seasons. (Ankeny with two 1sts and three 2nds, Fairfield with two 1sts, two 2nd and a 3rd.) I think they will be very close in this competition and I would be extremely surprised to see them finish more than two spots apart at most.
A lot of people have Center Grove solidly in their predictions. I would agree. However, they did lose to Bemidji at the qualifying competition. So there's that to take into consideration. Danville and Mt. Zion also have a pretty solid shot at snagging a finals spot. I think seeing who snags the last couple finals spots could be just as exciting as seeing who wins the competition.
Honestly this is such a solid competition with so many fantastic groups from all over the nation. I really wish I could be there.
Since Patrick is too busy uploading copyrighted material to YouTube, I'll do it for ya!
Central "Voices of Central" - 2nd, 6th
Jackson Prep "Reveillon" - 2nd, 3rd, 2nd, 2nd, 6th
Millard West "West in the Grove" - 5th, 4th, 2nd, 3rd, 4th
Carroll "Minstrel Magic" - 3rd, 1st, 1st, 3rd, 1st, 2nd, 4th, 4th
Horizon "Step on Stage" - 3rd
Norwell "Knight Moves" - 3rd, 3rd, 4th, 2nd, 1st, 4th, 2nd
Uniondale "Rhythm of the Knight" - 3rd (tie)
Jefferson "Westside Delegation" - 2nd, 1st, 3rd, 1st, 1st, 3rd
South Jones "Company" - 1st, 4th, 2nd, 1st, 3rd
Fairfield "Choraliers" - 1st, 3rd, 1st, 2nd, 2nd (tie)
Center Grove "Sound System" - 3rd, 3rd, 1st, 4th, 1st, 2nd
Danville "Delegation" - 3rd, 6th, 2nd, 1st, 2nd, no placement, 1st
John Burroughs "Powerhouse" - 1st, 1st, 1st, 2nd, 1st
Mt. Zion "Swingsations" - 2nd, 3rd, 2nd, 4th, 1st, 2nd
Los Alamitos "Sound FX" - 3rd, 1st, 1st
Bemidji "Vocalmotive" - 3rd, 3rd, 1st, 3rd, 1st
Jenks "Trojanaires" - 1st, 1st
It's interesting to see how many times a group performs through the year... some on this list have competed only once this season while others have competed as many as eight times. That's something the "ranking" sites don't take into consideration but absolutelry should - it's obviously easier to have a "perfect" season when only competing once or twice than it is to win eight times in a row. Also, I'll just point out that Los Al is competing this weekend at the SoCal competition (which SCC will be streaming live!), so they will have another award on their list before FAME.
Just to add Sullivan "Singers": 4th, NP, 5th, 3rd, 1st, 3rd
I know that there are a lot of "big boys" at this competition who have had very strong seasons, but I also wanted to credit our kids with their undefeted small mixed division season!!! And we did it with 20/19 kids. I know that many states have different kinds of divisions that don't always correlate, but I wanted our students to get their credit for that as well as placeing very well against the large groups in finals. Just something that tends to get lost amongst the large groups...