QUOTE(Robert E. Lee @ Mar 5 2007, 11:11 PM) 392019
I do declare that the moment I read about our misdemeanor in the attendence of the awards ceremony during Totino-Grace "Spectacular" 2007. I was SHOCKED and APPALED at the news of our group cheering when Urbandale was announced to be 1st runner up. Why, back in my day when the 5th Runner up was announced, we would all throw cow pies and brand them with little L's on their foreheads so they would know to be ashamed of their place in society. For the Fourth runner ups we would do nothing, because that's what they were. NOTHING! We knew that in ours and their hearts they would fade forever into obscurity and never be remembered by their grandchildren. Thrice behind first would always get the best, for a mighty bellow would arise from our mandibles as we would cheer for our Junior Varsity, for we knew that they would always be better than those in fourth. In order to give those in third fair game, we would raid Grandma Maddux's chicken shed and force them to tend to her chickens for a decade. I vaguely recall how Stonewall and I would treat those in first runner up, but it must have been fierce, for every group we had competed with since had refused to compete with us again, or perhaps they had been slaughtered by an overzealous group cheering for their own, who knows, by that time i would have consumed copius amounts of moonshine.
Bemidji should be ashamed of their demeanor at Totino. I would hope Urbandale would have done twice, nay, three times the insult of Bemidji's little cheer.
Oh, and our hosts were fairly spectacular, if I do say so myself. I would gladly have them host one of my evening bashes, or perhaps a wedding or two. Now if you may excuse me, I must tend to my dearly beloved Custis.
-Robert E. Lee
March 6, 1887
Time Traveler Extraordinaire/Postman
This is Kevin Francis, the Asst. Director of bemidji Vocamotive and i do not appreciate this post! whoever this is, whether you are an active member of vocalmotive or not, do not continue to make innapropriate posts on here. people are obviously upset by their opinion of what happened at the finals awards presentation, and you making jokes and mocking the "issue" is very innapropriate. i appoligize to everyone who feels bemidji acted wrongly in this situation, i am working on writing a formal reply right now, i want to make sure i take the time to write everything i want ,and to say things in the right way whether i agree or disagree..thanks.
Kevin Francis
I do declare that the moment I read about our misdemeanor in the attendence of the awards ceremony during Totino-Grace "Spectacular" 2007. I was SHOCKED and APPALED at the news of our group cheering when Urbandale was announced to be 1st runner up. Why, back in my day when the 5th Runner up was announced, we would all throw cow pies and brand them with little L's on their foreheads so they would know to be ashamed of their place in society. For the Fourth runner ups we would do nothing, because that's what they were. NOTHING! We knew that in ours and their hearts they would fade forever into obscurity and never be remembered by their grandchildren. Thrice behind first would always get the best, for a mighty bellow would arise from our mandibles as we would cheer for our Junior Varsity, for we knew that they would always be better than those in fourth. In order to give those in third fair game, we would raid Grandma Maddux's chicken shed and force them to tend to her chickens for a decade. I vaguely recall how Stonewall and I would treat those in first runner up, but it must have been fierce, for every group we had competed with since had refused to compete with us again, or perhaps they had been slaughtered by an overzealous group cheering for their own, who knows, by that time i would have consumed copius amounts of moonshine.
Bemidji should be ashamed of their demeanor at Totino. I would hope Urbandale would have done twice, nay, three times the insult of Bemidji's little cheer.
Oh, and our hosts were fairly spectacular, if I do say so myself. I would gladly have them host one of my evening bashes, or perhaps a wedding or two. Now if you may excuse me, I must tend to my dearly beloved Custis.
-Robert E. Lee
March 6, 1887
Time Traveler Extraordinaire/Postman
I'm sure Mr. Fettig, director of Vocalmotive, will relay this information to the students and parents so that there's not another incident like this one. But, rest assured, Urbandale, I was with all of the VM kids when you were performing in Finals, and we were all dumbstruck by how awesome your show was. I'm sure I speak for at least most of the people in Vocalmotive when I say we respect you immensely as a group and were in no way insulting you when we did our traditional cheer. As Matt already stated above, the cheer has been a tradition for quite awhile. Every year... or I guess every so often, since we didn't add one last year, there's another part added (2004-2005 show, "THUNDER!" from Thunderstruck, and 2006-2007 show "tsss!" from Barracuda.) It's a cheer VM does every show in the staging room before we go on to pump ourselves up.
All in all, great competition. Even though I graduated last year, I'm going to try and come back for as many years as I can, especially to this competition. Great job all around.
Maybe the cheering discussion is just an Iowa thing. I know many of the competitions down here will actually have the emcee stop before announcing 1st runner up and remind everyone that we'll know who the GC is when 1st runner up is announced and that we should give them their recognition before celebrating the victory. Sooo..because of that we might be slightly more sensitive to the whole thing.
I don't know anything about parents and their behavior and I'm not going to hold anybody from VM responsible for a slightly over excited parent or two (we all have those...trust me).
QUOTE
The scores were tired going into finals, you don't think about how you are going to re-act initially and if you say you would your lying.
I guarantee you that every member of Studio was prepared to react appropriately if we had been fortunate enough to win last Saturday. We make sure before we ever compete that they know what is expected of them when awards are announced starting when they are in Vitality.
I think we should put this whole debate to rest though. Bemidji won a hotly contested competition. You deserve congratulations for your accomplishment and nobody from Urbandale is trying to say otherwise. Your group is very talented and will likely win many more championships in the years to come based on the way they continue to improve year after year. Hopefully this debate will simply make you more aware of the impact of your actions at future competitions and you'll take at least a brief moment to congratulate the second place finisher before taking part in your own extended and well deserved celebration.
I don't want this to tarnish an otherwise outstanding invitational hosted by Totino Grace and I expect that nobody else from Urbandale will have anything further to say about it. RIGHT?!?!?
I look forward to seeing you again next year wherever our paths may cross.
Studio had no problem with Bemidiji cheering for themselves. They won and they definitely deserve the recognition. What happend that disapointed us is that when Studio was announced as second, Bemidiji knew they were first, obviously, and started congratulating EACH OTHER, instead of us for getting second place at a great competition. In addition, there were a couple parents who turned around and made rude comments to Studio members ("Nice job...to us...." "Congratulations...HAHA!"). Members of vocalmotive were on the stage to recieve their medals before Studio even had a chance to accept their award. Finally, when Vocalmotive took their trophy they cheered something to the effective "Studio, Studio, eat 'em up, eat 'em up." I'm sure you're familiar with that one...
Anyway, I am not trying to start any controversy at all. I just wanted to clarify what exactly we meant by "rude cheering" so that it wasn't taken out of context. I want to congratulate Bemidiji on their win and thank Totino Grace soooo much for such an amazing competition! It was well worth the drive. Our hosts were amazing: friendly and so talented. The food is delicious. The decorations are adorable. Its just a fun atmosphere. I wish I could come back next year but alas...I'm graduating! ;)
Daniella,
I figured I should add my two cents on the cheering discussion. First off, I'm sorry that you had people turn around and make rude comments to you. That was definitely uncalled for.
I'll admit, I've been a Vocalmotive alumni for two years now, but when I was at a competition as a show choir member (I was a member for 3 years) or audience member, I always saw the entire "audience" explode into applause, including both the grand champion and 1st runner-up groups. I can't say that I've been to Linn-Marr before though, although I have seen/been to Onalaska, Hastings, Waconia, Eau Claire, and Totino-Grace. Linn-Marr is a new competition in Vocalmotive's calendar (they only started performing there last year instead of going to Onalaska), so after seeing 10 years of everyone cheering after 1st runner-up, we (I'll at least say that I did) thought it was the "norm" to cheer after 1st runner-up because we had seen other schools do the same thing.
I remember back two years ago to the Totino-Grace competition when Bemidji narrowly lost Grand Champion to Hastings. It was nice to hear show choir members and parents from Hastings saying nice things to us before and after the results, and I'm sorry that that was different for you this year. Everyone, including all the parents knew that it was extremely close going into finals, which is a sign of excellence on both sides, rather than faults.
Oh, and as for the cheer... I think someone covered this already, but I figured I should talk about that briefly too. Here is the full cheer (well, the full cheer "back in my day"):
Tutti Fruiti Pumpkin Booty!
Watch Bemidji go on down!
Oh, we going down, to touch the ground!
Oh, we coming up, to pump you up!
Here we go here we go here we go here we go!
OOOOOOOOHH!!!
*insert random dog howl/bark*
Wourms!! (which is referring back to Matt Wourms, a member of VM about 4 years ago, not the animal)
Mazel Tov! HEY! (which was referring back to the Around the World in a Day show of 2002-2003 where the men's piece was from Fiddler on the Roof)
OH OH OH! OH OH OH!
Some of the end seems to have changed in the past two years, but this cheer started back at least 5 or 6 years ago, and there's never been any part of it that's meant to bash other groups (we always use the cheer before performances and sometimes after results).
I hope that I was able to explain things logically and hopefully I'm not sparking the fire. Congratulations are in order to Urbandale (both Studio 2007 and Vitality) and I hope you rock up your competition next weekend!
Studio had no problem with Bemidiji cheering for themselves. They won and they definitely deserve the recognition. What happend that disapointed us is that when Studio was announced as second, Bemidiji knew they were first, obviously, and started congratulating EACH OTHER, instead of us for getting second place at a great competition. In addition, there were a couple parents who turned around and made rude comments to Studio members ("Nice job...to us...." "Congratulations...HAHA!"). Members of vocalmotive were on the stage to recieve their medals before Studio even had a chance to accept their award. Finally, when Vocalmotive took their trophy they cheered something to the effective "Studio, Studio, eat 'em up, eat 'em up." I'm sure you're familiar with that one...
Anyway, I am not trying to start any controversy at all. I just wanted to clarify what exactly we meant by "rude cheering" so that it wasn't taken out of context. I want to congratulate Bemidiji on their win and thank Totino Grace soooo much for such an amazing competition! It was well worth the drive. Our hosts were amazing: friendly and so talented. The food is delicious. The decorations are adorable. Its just a fun atmosphere. I wish I could come back next year but alas...I'm graduating! ;)
I know that a lot has been said about the cheering problem...People say that Bemidji should have waited longer to cheer and others have said that they chanted something mean like "Ubandale Ubandale eat em up eat up"....when the cheer goes...."...whatch bemidji goin down up, we'er going down up, were goin up up, to pump you up!" I know this because I hold the cheer. Besides the point of that, it's hard to be able to say what a choir should do and how one should act when hearing the restults of a comp. Spectacluar in my mind was the best in my 3 years, I loved everyones performance and I got chills from all the soloists. The score was tied going into finals, two 1st place votes and two 2nd place votes for each team. The anticipation to hear the winner was unbareable...you know the feeling when they go down from 6th to 5th to 4th and so on, you just get more and more excited. Lots of ppl know what it feels like to get 2nd place and watch the other team cheer, it's happened to me before and I don't remeber any of the team making a huge fuss out of it. Two very talented and very dedicated groups went head to head and one came out on top...The scores were tired going into finals, you don't think about how you are going to re-act initially and if you say you would your lying. I noticed that someone had posted that at Linn-Mar, Ankeny had waited and applauded for Urbandale when they had gotten 2nd, yes that was very generous and "correct sportsmanship" according to alot of ppl. I was in the crowd and I don't think that was the 1st thing to come to mind, honestly; There again 2 very talented and dedicated groups went for 1st place. It's hard too say that a group needs to act a certain way or cheer a certain way, you don't know in the heat of the moment you are going to walk the walk how you talk the talk. Urbabdale is a great show choir, I got to see them perform at Linn-Mar and in Finals at Spectacular...AMAZING, the vocals were huge and it matched the dancing. I was so neverous watching them knowing that bemidji better have performed there butts off to match this. The results were so up in the air, either team could have won, it came down to a single point. But, I just hope that something small as cheering or miss understanding someones chant makes such a big deal, set off a fire of heated posts, thats rediculous. Neither choir has anything against each other, they both perfom well and do well at any comp they attend. Lets put the cheering problem to rest. I hope that this post has not angered anyone, it's just another view of this whole cheering problem.
Congrats to all tha performed at Spectacular, The last 3 years of show choir wouldn't have been the same without it!
Some thoughts on the whole cheering controversey...
Is not being able to cheer by yourselves really that big of a deal? Or are we just looking for something to complain about because everything else at the comp was FLAWLESS?
In the next few years, i hope that urbandale doesn't remember this comp as the year that they got snuffed out of being able to cheer alone.
Afterthought: waconia last year?
Studio had no problem with Bemidiji cheering for themselves. They won and they definitely deserve the recognition. What happend that disapointed us is that when Studio was announced as second, Bemidiji knew they were first, obviously, and started congratulating EACH OTHER, instead of us for getting second place at a great competition. In addition, there were a couple parents who turned around and made rude comments to Studio members ("Nice job...to us...." "Congratulations...HAHA!"). Members of vocalmotive were heading to the stage to recieve their medals before Studio even had a chance to accept their award. Finally, when Vocalmotive took their trophy they cheered something to the effective "Studio, Studio, eat 'em up, eat 'em up." I'm sure you're familiar with that one...
Anyway, I am not trying to start any controversy at all. I just wanted to clarify what exactly we meant by "rude cheering" so that it wasn't taken out of context. I want to congratulate Bemidiji on their win and thank Totino Grace soooo much for such an amazing competition! It was well worth the drive. Our hosts were amazing: friendly and so talented. The food is delicious. The decorations are adorable. Its just a fun atmosphere. I wish I could come back next year but alas...I'm graduating! ;)
Some thoughts on the whole cheering controversey...
Is not being able to cheer by yourselves really that big of a deal? Or are we just looking for something to complain about because everything else at the comp was FLAWLESS?
In the next few years, i hope that urbandale doesn't remember this comp as the year that they got snuffed out of being able to cheer alone.
It's nice to know we were missed. I know there were a lot of tears when we heard the District Office banned us from going. We all really hope to be able to attend next year!
Congrats to all the groups that placed. From what I've heard, you all did amazing!
HEY...my ribbon was special in it's own way!!! But only after Ana worked her magic fingers...they really are magic folks. Spectacular was just that this year...Spectacular.
Thanks again to Adam Peters for suggesting the ribbon idea- it was a great way to both raise money and awareness.
Adam, Chris, and Nick- thank you a thousand times for coming up here for Spectacular. I was very excited to have you at T-G! I love you guys!!!
No problem, the ribbons turned out beautiful (except Nicks... haha)! I can't believe how much money you all raised for Enterprise! Props to Totino and to all who donated!
I am so glad I went to the competition. We all had a really fun time and it was definitely worth the 6 hours on the road... and maybe the $137 dollar ticket.
Other comments-
This competition has the best food by far! I felt like I was dining at a nice restaurant ( I never eat at show choir competitions... but the food looked suitable for humans, so I decided to break my rule, and boy was I glad that I did!!)
The Yo Quiero Jesus sticker... It's so funny to hear what sticks out to people who are unfamiliar with the school- you forget there's crucifixes and Mary posters all over the place! Did any of you take pictures by the portrait of the Totino's??? LOL
Anyway,
This was a really special weekend for all of us at Totino-Grace, and I want to say thank you to all of our guests- performers, directors, families, and fans. It's always wonderful for us to have an opportunity to open up our "home" to you, and share in a great day of music and community. The spirit and energy was very unique and VERY special this year, for a few reasons.
We were very touched to see how everyone at our competition stood together with the entire show choir community, in support of Enterprise, Alabama. We raised $1600 after all was said and done. There's going to be a check sent down this week, with a card bearing the names of each of our competing show choirs. It was really a beautiful thing to look out at the audience into a sea of blue and white ribbons. Thanks again to Adam Peters for suggesting the ribbon idea- it was a great way to both raise money and awareness.
We were also very moved by how much all of our guests rallied behind OUR program this weekend. So many groups tried so hard to attend- several groups who had to cancel were calling their superintendants to change their minds, and almost of our groups agreed to schedule changes. Grous like Urbandale had to FIGHT to get here, and they did it! The parents and fans were incredibly patient and understanding with the ong breaks and choppy schedule, and it seemed like many of you were making an effort to eat and shop simply to support us. It means a lot, and makes such a difference to our program. Words can't express how grateful we are.
Mostly though, we appreciate the atmosphere set by everyone. The audience was positive and supportive for the most part, and people seemed to be having fun and enjoying themselves. Each of the show choirs who performed did a great job, and really gave it everything they had. The directors I had a chance to talk to throughout the day were in great spirits. Adam, Chris, and Nick- thank you a thousand times for coming up here for Spectacular. I was very excited to have you at T-G! I love you guys!!!
It would have been very easy to fall into a funk about the 7 groups who were unable to attend, or to give less than 100% because not everyone was there- but no one did! The vision for our competition is really to put on an event that will celebrate the abilities of the students, entertain audiences, and create a lasting memory for everyone involved. Thanks to all of you who helped us realize this. We are truly blessed to be a part of this community.
p.s. Binkie Binkerson has already committed to make an appearance at the 2008 Totino-Grace Show Choir Spectacular!
Totino-Grace Show Choir Spectacular 2007
