Show choir’s burning up
Titanium performer Audrey Pittman, 11th, sings “Havana.”
Show choir is turning up the heat this season with the vast majority of the students in the varsity group being seniors. Out of the 58 kids in Titanium, 42 of them are seniors.
“It’s really fun [having so many seniors in the show choir].” Junior Katie Nguyen, a dance captain on Titanium, said, “Us younger underclassmen have a lot of people to look up to because all these seniors have been through it before.”
“They’ve been there and they’ve done it, they’ve experienced it.” Choir director Scott Dugdale added, “they show the younger kids how to walk on stage, how to perform onstage, how to win, how to lose graciously.”
This large percentage of seniors in show choir is unusual. Show choir recruitment dropped due to the global pandemic.
“So there was a bit of a handshake agreement with all the Omaha metro area and Lincoln schools that we were just not going to field competitive show choir,” Choir director Brian Johnson said, “When that happened, a lot of the kids in the middle schools were told ‘we can’t do show choir’, and so those kids found other…activities.”
Before COVID, there had been four show choir groups.
“We had Titan Express, which is our normal prep group, then we fielded another 48 kids … in a second prep group that we called Revolution. We would probably be still doing four show choirs today if it weren’t for COVID,” Dugdale said.
Show Choir recruitment was not the only thing that was impacted because of COVID.
“I think last year we went into the season without any expectation because it was after the COVID year people’s reputation for us was based on the year before,” Nguyen said, “but this year, especially
with how well we competed and performed, the competition is a lot heavier and a lot harder because … people know us as a competitive team.”
Competitions in show choir are set up by the show choir directors. Certain competitions have a reputation for being well run with great judges and outstanding exhibitions. When choosing a competition, directors will go based on the other top notch programs that go there.
“We want our kids to compete against the other schools that are of … similar skill set,” Johnson said, “So that the competition is more even, because you don’t want to go out into a competition where it’s a bunch of really, really tiny schools that don’t do it as much… you get first place, but that’s not very gratifying because the competition isn’t right.”
During competitions the host school provides everything; from the judges, to space for the other competitors. There is no overarching agency like the NSAA for show choir; it is all done through the schools.
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Hello! My name is Paige Miller. I’m a junior, and this is my first year on staff for Titan Legacy and South Star yearbook. I do photography, writing,...
