Dancesport BYU

Yet another comp under our belt! It was a long and sometimes very stressful weekend, but we learned a lot and I at least had a good time!

The weekend started with our first event Pre-Champ Ballroom which was on Friday. We were dressed to the nines, warmed up, and had checked our dance position with our coach and got a thumbs up. We were feeling pretty good about our prospects, though there was a lot more couples competing in this comp than the previous ones. We danced as best we could, but it still just wasn't good enough to be called back immediately. We did get quite a few judges calling us back, but we were two judges off of being able to make it back. Michael said that he thought we had a good chance at being called back, but we just weren't quite there yet.

Saturday dawned, and I had a renewed wish to make it to the final in one of our events. We had Novice Ballroom and our Gold class event which was Fox-Trot. After prepping myself with all of the needed crap, I headed to the Wilk, got dressed, and warmed up. Scott and I ran our routines, and went over our mental lists about the specific things that we needed to concentrate on while dancing. Michael came up to us and checked off our frame again, giving us a few pointers, and wished us luck. We lined up and anxiously awaited our event to begin. We were the third heat out, so we got to gear up mentally for our event. I think we danced beautifully the first round, and nearly all of the judges agreed as they called us back in both dances. We stopped for a quick word with Michael, and then we were immediately back in line-up for the next round. We were a little tired for the next round, but we still did our best. After we were done dancing Michael informed me that my shoulders were doing something weird, and that I had to get a grip on them and keep them still if I wanted to make it back again. We made it to the Quarter-Final heat. We danced as best we could, but my shoulders still were having issues. Not enough judges called us back, so we missed out on being in the Semi-Final, but only by a few marks.

Fox-Trot went a lot better, though I was still having issues with my shoulders. We made it to the Semi-Finals in Fox-Trot, but just barely missed the finals.

I feel like we are on a plateau and just need to figure out how to make the next leap to improve our impression. Michael coached us on our promenade position, which is where my shoulder problems were stemming from. We are not taking a huge break between now and January's competition, we are going to be pushing through and working on our basic technique so our dances look better overall.

I am confident that this next season will be a lot of fun, and will teach us many more lessons. I hope we can start placing consistently higher in the rankings, both in Novice and Pre-Champ. But my ultimate goal is to get proficient enough to start competing in Championship Ballroom, which is much more competitive, and has all five dances. That is my goal.