Just Missed

As I said last week, I have no clue what constitutes a good routine vs. a bad one anymore.  Today at the State finals, I thought the girls put on an awesome routine.  There were a couple of slip ups, but overall their performance was much better than last week’s regional final.  There were a couple of teams in their class that I thought were clearly better, but I thought we’d be hearing Menomonee Falls announced on the winners stage. 

Imagine my shock this week, when they didn’t get announced.  In fact, afterward, we found out that the judging had them with a worse score than their regional result even after having a better performance.  This is sort of one of the reasons I prefer sports that have a hard score and are not left up to judging.  Races… there is a clear winner and loser.  Teams sports… One teams score more points that the other resulting in a clear winner.  Sports that require “judging” will depend on who is doing the judging.  Maybe someone puts more emphasis on jumps (like in the regionals) and one might put more emphasis on the dance portion of the routine, or the tumbling aspects. Then again, what do I know?

There were only two teams we didn’t see perform, and of the ones we saw, we thought our girls would end up in third place, and if we got lucky, maybe second.  They ended up in 4^th place, something like 1.5 or 2 points out of third.  And the team that got third was one we didn’t see (and just happened to be Sussex Hamilton).  I can’t get too crazy because I didn’t see their routine, but people we were speaking to that did told us it wasn’t all that great.  That was definitely as bitter pill to swallow, but I guess they should just count themselves as lucky for even making it as they may have been the beneficiaries of some generous judging to even make it to State. 

Congratulations on a great season girls!  Go Falls!

Big Send Off

This morning we all met at the high school to see the girls off to the State Cheer finals.  The AD was there to take pictures and video because the girls got a police escort out of town.  I thought that was awesome for them.  Cheerleading doesn’t get near the recognition that the traditional sports do, and honestly, I think that the cheer team gets hosed by the high school.  They don’t get their accomplishments recognized with banners when they win, and they aren’t allowed to display their trophies, so the police send off was a nice nod to the things they have accomplished this year. 

Good luck at STATE to our Cheer Team! Go Falls! - Menomonee Falls High School Athletics from Dennis Hahn on Vimeo.

State Regional

It seems a little anti-climactic going to the state cheer regionals the week after being at nationals, but that’s what happened this weekend.  I don’t claim to be an expert when it comes to figuring out judging for cheer competitions, but I thought I had a pretty good idea of what is good and what is bad.  Well thrown all that out, because I am officially stating, I HAVE NO CLUE!

The girls were in a division with, I believe, six other teams.  We figured that they would take the 4 top teams to advance to the state competition next week in Madison, maybe five if we were lucky.  After watching their performance this week, I had some serious misgivings they would be in that group, and I think Kris agreed with me.  There were a couple of teams that had performances that were clearly over the rest of the teams.  And a couple of the teams looked ok, but I thought they would be on the outs.  The Falls’ performance had a couple of falls, and I thought was definitely not one of their better efforts.  Afterward, the coaches also laid into them for the uninspiring, poor routine they pulled. 

But then when it came time for announcing the winners, we didn’t get called for fifth, or fourth, so we figured, well, it has been a good season.  Then all of a sudden they announce, “In second place, Menomonee Falls!”  I was stunned, as was Kris, the teams, and I think the coaches too.  The funniest thing was hearing the Hamilton parents that were sitting near us going ballistic.  Hamilton (the Falls’ biggest rival) finished in third place.  So how they got second, I have no idea.  Apparently, they judges put a lot of emphasis on their jumps and other moves and did not put as much into the falls that they had. 

I say they got lucky, but take it and move on.  State is next week and if they perform like they did at the regionals I think they may be in the cellar.  Then again, what do I know?

Heading Home

We had an early flight home from Orlando.  It must have been the first one of the day.  Take off was at something like 7:00 AM (Might have been earlier, I don’t quite remember).  So we had to get up early to drive back to Orlando from my folks’ house.  It was a pretty good drive back, no incidents of traffic jams.  And getting the rental car back was smooth too.  It was once we got to the airport that things got messy. 

The check in desk at Frontier only had two people working it, and the line was probably 50-60 people deep.  The girls had gotten there early so they were already thru and waiting for TSA screening by the time we got in line.  And it took FOREVER!!!  It was at least a half an hour waiting to get checked in (whatever happened to curbside check in?).  Once we were thru the check in process at the counter, we had to go thru TSA screening, which was about 4 or 5 times as bad as checking in.  WOW!  Funny, they always tell you to get to the airport an hour early for domestic flights, and we were there more than 90 minutes ahead of time and by the time we got thru TSA and to our gate, we only had about 5-10 minutes to wait before we were able to board.

While in the TSA line we saw several of the teams that Ali competed against, and a couple had trophies.  Kris talked to a couple of parents from some of the other teams while we were in line to find out how the finals went and who won, what place they took, etc.

Then when we got on board the plane we ended up sitting near some kids from a team from Madison who obviously had just woken up and drove to the airport, because they looked (and smelled) like they hadn’t showered in a day or two.  YUCK!  And I was lucky enough to get the middle seat and sit next to one of them.

There was also a kid on the flight home across the aisle from Kris who looked to be probably between 2 and 3 years old.  He was a drippy, snotty, mess and had a toy car he kept dropping.  GERM FACTORY!!!  His mom ended up having to take him to the bathroom in flight because he obviously had filled his diaper (or pull-up… or whatever he was wearing) and needed a change. Again… YUCK!!!! 

Overall, it was a pretty good trip and we are very proud of Ali and how the team performed.  Kudos go out to Sharon and Liz (their coaches) for having them prepped and coached so well.  The only thing that sucked was the flight home, and maybe the hassle we had with the water at the resort.  I can’t wait to do it again next year (fingers crossed).

Back On Track, Or Time To Stop?

While sitting around Sunday night relaxing waiting to get ready to go back to Wisconsin my father mentioned that he hadn’t seen anything on my blog in quite some time. I told him that yes, I know, I have been slacking off. Time just seems to be tight with everything else going on at work, and home that by the time I am able to sit down and type out what is happening in our lives, I just feel too tired. My mind set is, I’ll get to it tomorrow. The only problem is that tomorrow, I feel just as tired by the time I get around to being able to sit down. And so the cycle continues.

But rest assured, I make my notes about everything that is happening. In fact I have a list of between 30 and 50 things I need to finish writing. I only hope I don’t forget too much by the time I can sit down and write it out. Since I use my blog as sort of a snapshot/diary of what is happening in our lives, I want to be able years from now, to either download it digitally, or print it out somehow so we have a record of what happened to us when. I am sure I’ll have Kris tell me I am wrong with a lot, because she remembers something differently, well, that’s just too bad.

Told to Stop

Kris and I went to EPCOT for the day since we didn’t get to go last month when we were here, and it is my favorite park. However, I was told that I had to stop taking pictures. Kris told me I looked ridiculous taking pictures of all sorts of things around the park. Well that was also the purpose of buying an expensive DSLR camera. I want to be able to take pictures of things. Flowers, the monorail, the facades of the shops in the world showcase, or even the fountains. I really wanted to take one of the big fountain right behind Spaceship Earth; that is my favorite one. But I guess I was being embarrassing, so I stopped. It put me in a bad mood the rest of the day. I guess having an actual camera to take pictures instead of a phone makes you look stupid. I wish I had known that before buying it.

Turning Left

Since the girls are done with their performances, and we don’t have anything else to do, Kris and I decided to drive up to Daytona and take a tour of the Speedway before calling it a trip and heading back to my parents’ house for our last night in Florida. We were going to stop when we were there in December, but it was late in the day and the girls really could have cared less, so we put it off.

Obviously, the racetrack is huge. And I didn’t know exactly what we’d be seeing. The description of the tour didn’t really get specific. And with the Daytona 500 only being a week away, I thought there may be a lot of things/areas on lockdown preparing for the race. But I was wrong.

We were in a tram being towed by a big Chevy pickup truck (at least I think it was a Chevy). We got to see the winner’s circle, some of the inside track areas (there is actually a smaller track on the infield) the driver’s meeting area, a press area where they do the press conferences after the race, some of the garage areas, and then up into the remodeled stands. Like I said, the track is HUGE! And there was actually some sort of “driver’s experience” you can take. For the sum of something like $157 and change you can sit in the passenger seat of a race car while a professional driver takes you around the track and nearly 200 mph. There were actually people doing it while we were there. I had at first thought that it may have been some race team Yeah, it would have been fun, but not for that much. Maybe that is a birthday present/Christmas present idea for Kris.





Overall, not a bad little 90 minute tour.