UCA Prelims

We got to the ESPN Zone, or whatever Disney calls the complex, very early Saturday morning. The gates opened at 7:00 and performances started at 8:00, but since we have never been here before I didn’t know what traffic would be like, or how crowded the venues would be, or where they even were on the grounds we tried to get there as soon as we could. We had to wait in line for a short time to get into the parking lot, and then we ended up parking a good five minute (if not slightly longer) walk away from the gates. They did offer preferred parking for something like $20, but I wasn’t sure if I could just get into that line. As we walked in, I thought I should have at least tried.

Once we got in, we walked around a little bit looking for the right place to go. There were something like five or six different fieldhouses/arenas/tents that were holding competitions depending on school size, class, and category. It didn’t take too long to find where we needed to go though. We were at least a half an hour early, and the place was pretty empty, and cold. They apparently needed to pump the A/C in to make sure it stayed cool, even though it was only about 50 degrees outside. We were even able to see the girls before the performances began, and were able to talk to the coaches a little bit. Everyone seemed very relaxed, which was a good thing.

It was almost two hours before they went on, so we had to sit thru a lot of the competition. It was very interesting seeing some of the other schools. My initial thoughts were that if the girls performed like they did at the qualifier, they would do pretty well. There were lots of mistakes, and falls, though as we found out when Sarah cheered, that doesn’t necessarily mean anything. A lot has to do with the degree of difficulty of the routine.

So… here is their preliminary performance:

UCA Nationals - Preliminary Round from Dennis Hahn on Vimeo.

Not too shabby.