Chicago Trip & Dance Competition

Two familiar faces showing off their awards

and may I say that bun on the left looks SHARP!

On the weekend of February 29 - March 2 Lucy, Jackie, Allie and I went down to Chicago for the annual Championship competition. I had a few free rental car days accumulated from all of my business travel, so rather than driving Paul & Lucy's minivan or my Hyundai, I rented a minivan for the trip. The minivan was very roomy and looked a bit more "cool" than some older model vans...which caused Jackie to shout out "Suzy pulled up in a Hummer!" when I drove up. I think we all agreed that the best feature was the fact that there was a DVD player for those in the back seat.


The competition results were spectacular! Out of 19 competitors (including some top US and Canadian dancers), Jackie placed 6th in the sword dance!!! Yeah Jackie! Out of 14, Allie got a 2nd a 6th and a 4th!!! Yeah Allie-Hat! For those of you who are out of the know - as a Championship competition means there are three judges, your overall result is based on the average of the points each judge assigned to their top 6 dancers (for instance, one judge could place you 1st, but if the other two don't place you in their top 6, you might receive just a 5th place overall). We were thrilled to see that one of the three judges had placed Allie 1st in the Fling. The girl who received the 1st place medal in the Fling danced at the World Championships at Cowal last August and placed 2nd overall in the world for all 16 & 17 year olds. That means one judge placed Allie ahead of the girl who had the 2nd best fling in the world last August...could this mean that in the opinion of judge McCulloch, Allie has the #1 Fling in the world? Something to ponder.

Last year at this time the same foursome travelled to San Francisco to attend a competition together, and this year Chicago. Next year Honolulu?