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07/07/2007
North American Nationals - 2nd Place!
I am one happy camper today! Yesterday my team and I competed in the Adult women's 8-hand ceili competition at the North American Nationals, and we came in 2nd place!!! We couldn't believe it, especially as we saw some other teams there who were really great also. We put the team together around April or so, and we learned the dance from scratch. It's been a long road, trying to get everyone to dance the same, considering there was a wide range of experience and skill level among our group. Still, it worked out really well.
We danced at about 10:45 am, but didn't get the award til about 4:15 pm. It was a long wait, and the awards ceremony took forever, especially as there were enormous numbers of kids teams, so you got announcements like, "Alright, girls Under-13 8-Hand ceili competition.... In 17th place, we have........ team number [whatever] from [and then you can't hear the announcer from the over the din of 2000 teenage girls screaming at the top of their lungs...]" Then you have to wait for the team to come up and get their 17th place medals and pose for pictures and the audience to quiet down a bit so that the announcer can continue, "Aaaaaaaand in *16th* place, we have..." etc etc etc. Wow that took a long time. The awards ceremony started at 2:30-ish and like I said, we didn't get our awards til about 4:15, and even then it wasn't quite over, as they still had to hand out awards for dance drama.
It really was an interesting experience, especially for my dad, who had never been to a feis before, never mind the nationals. Fortunately he came on ceili day, so the full psychedelic-ness of Solo dresses and costumes never quite hit him!
Anyway, I'm glad I took the day off work, and glad I did this, even though there were moments along the way where I was questioning my sanity in doing all this.
The fruits of my (and the team's) labour!
16:10 Posted in Irish Dancing | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this