Pride of Cincinnati Diaries 2006

3/23-3/26-Ryle Show

SCV Power Regional Diary

By: Brian Robinson


Thursday

I had the priviledge of waking up at 5:00am on Thursday morning! This was so I, along with my 2 roommates could make it to the 10:00am rehearsal. We normally don't have rehearsals on Thursday but this was an exception. We rehearsed from about 10:00am until about 10:00pm. We were clarifying things in the show as well as making sure even the little things were as crisp and clean as possible for the weekend. Towards the end of the day I hurt myself but it is just one of those things a normal colorguard person would just need to push through or get over until I actually have time to heal it. We finished the day with a hard but fun run-through to showcase the hard work throughout the day. We ventured back to our home in Lexington, KY to sleep before another early day on Friday.

Friday

Now I got to "sleep in" today. I woke up at 7:30am. We got ready and left the house at 8:30am. Our flight departed Lousville, KY at 12:00pm. We landed in GA before we got on our final flight to California! On the flight to CALI a little girl sat in front of us and attempted to entertain us the entire way there. I am really excited about this trip because I get to see a bunch of my friends from the west coast. Many of them are in Fantasia and Northern Lights. A large amount of these west coast friends are in the SCV winterguard. I marched with them this past summer. When we finally got to CALI we were greeted by Nathan Marvin and the video camera!!! We hung out in the airport until the rest of the flights came in. Once everyone was there we loaded onto the Santa Clara Vanguard bus 2!!! It was the old staff bus for the Santa Clara Vanguard. We stopped by an "In and Out" Burger place before heading to the hotel to go to sleep.

Saturday

This was the day of prelims and what an exciting day it was. Waking up in a bed was a very nice thing. It was a nice change from waking up on the armory ground. We had a nice breakfast at the IHOP that was next to our hotel. It was so neat because this hotel is the same hotel I stayed in for a week of everydays this summer at SCV. When we finished eating we got onto the Vanguard bus and headed to our rehearsal site. We had to wait for a younger winterguard to finish before we could start. This guard was pretty talented for the age that they were.

Our wonderful staff went out on a run to find me a wrap for my leg and they were back before the end of dance class. We had about a 4.5 hour rehearsal and we got a lot done. We started out with a dance class as usual before we moved to our 3rd section equipment warm-up. This meant that I was going to warm up on sabre. Tossing our show 6 was the next step and Rosie really helped in cleaning that up. We moved onto the rifle sommersault and many other things before the very productive run-though. When we got to the hotel we were to shower and show-prep. We had cold cuts for lunch during this time as well. Off to the Santa Clara Power Regional Prelims.

When we arrived at the arena many winterguards were seen standing and walking all over the area around the gym. I saw a few of my friends in Fantasia, Northern Lights, and SCV. Everyone was ready to bring it to prelims. The crowd was very intense on the inside. I'm sure they were excited to see what Pride had to offer this year. The warm-up process started and then we were taking the floor.....from Cincinnati, Ohio! Individually and ensembly, we had a decent run. I was happy with my show but there is always room for improvement! We won prelims by a small margin. We were excited that we had the chance to go out and make it all better. Before we went to sleep my friend from Fantasia walked over to the hotel from theirs with another friend from the summer and we caught up on everything before they had to walk back. After all, we all had a big day ahead of us.

Sunday

This was the day of finals and everyone was pumped. We ate at IHOP again and continued to get things ready for our short rehearsal. We had about a 2 hour rehearsal before we drove back to the hotel for showers and show-prep. Lunch was pizza and while everyone was getting ready it seemed that everyone was watching the world championships in ice skating. It looks like we have yet another thing in common here at the POC.

When we finished getting ready we piled onto the Vanguard bus and prepared for our short ride to the show site. We had lots of time once we got there and had a nice relaxed body warm-up outside. It was a pretty day and the warm up was amazing. We took a few tosses and it was so weird to be tossing and running parts of the indoor winterguard show outside in the sun and "wind." It made a few of us miss drum corps slightly!! Nevertheless we warmed up and went inside and had a fantastic finals performance. The audience seemed much more interested and entertained in our show in finals and it was overall a much better performance for the POC. We won finals by another small margin but we were all happy with our accomplishments.

After the show and awards I chatted with my friends in the other winterguards and changed out of my uniform. We had a VERY interesting bus ride to the airport. Memories were made on this bus ride....it was funny!!! Once we got to the airport we had about 3-4 hours of down time before we had to get on our flight. Can I just say YUPPIE GUPPIE!!!! Me, Andy, Nathan, Kim, Caitlyn, Matt and Pam made a new game in the airport to pass time. Kim did not want to eat her candy any more. So we decided to turn it into an olympic sport of catching the candy in our mouths. Kim would toss the candy in the air and we would jump and dive into the air to catch it in our mouth. It got to the point where 4 people were diving into the air to snatch a guppie!!! TONS of fun waiting for the flight. As we were waiting the Avon girls arrived in the gate area and a card game was played with them. We got on our plane late at night and flew through the morning.

Monday

There isn't much to say about Monday because we flew most of this day. Except that the people with the destination of Louisville, KY had a LOVELY delay in the Cincinnati airport!! It was great....but we finally got home and drove back to Lexington to do nothing but sleep the rest of the day away!!! YES Power Regionals....

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