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WGI Nashville Regional Friday would have started out a little later than normal for me if my professor had accepted my documented Pride excuse from Friday classes. Unfortunately, Advanced Writing called my name at nine in the morning, and so I was to be found at NKU enduring an hour of research paper writing. I couldn’t wait for noon to come. After a quick stop by home after class, my brother drove me to meet the bus that would cart us all to Nashville. Only the Cincy crew was being picked up here, so there were very few faces to say hello to. Valentine’s was the previous day though, so these hellos were met with hugs, kisses, and passing out of Valentine cards and presents. Spots on the bus were reserved with blankets and pillows and finally we started our first leg of the journey. The two-hour drive to Mall St. Matthews Mall of St. Something (or something like that) in Louisville went by in a flash. Amanda and I redefined the term ‘mall walking’ as we ran the maze of mall to the far side where we stopped in one of our favorite places: The Cheesecake Factory. I mean, we had all weekend to work it off, what was one slice of cheesecake? We need not have ran though, because when we got back to the bus the Indy and Louisville crew was slowly showing up and casually loading their things. And so the second leg began. After a quick dinner and another short ride, we arrived at the Nashville School of the Arts, our home for the next couple of days. Matt Humphrey welcomed us in and warned us that the cops would be on us like white on rice if we dared step a toe out of the school after the doors were locked at night. We all thought about it and then asked him if he knew if the cops were hott… Finally all of our belongings were loaded into the school and we prepared for a normal Friday night rehearsal. Bobby, my valentine, finally showed up and I expressed my undying love for him. Well, I gave him a lot of chocolate at least. Melissa then led us in dance class and it was off to technique. Rifles had to watch out throwing sevens because of the rafters and I ended up spinning my ending flag feature under a basketball hoop. Time to get ready for sleepy time! I checked my phone and realized I didn’t silence it. It rang a couple of times and was in the other gym the whole time. Sorry ‘Mark of NSA’!!!!!! Travis and I blew up our air mattress and followed the Great Migration to the other gym where more lights could be shut off. No one was in the mood to sleep though, so we all sat up chatting for a long while. “Good morning Toni!” was a phrase that came way to fast. Melissareally got us in the mood to take on the day though with a quick word before a short dance class. Then Bart spoke with us too and we were all ready and set to go and perform our hearts out. Make-up and hair prep took place amidst a high school basketball tournament. Finally we were looking grand and getting on the bus. We all looked anxiously around the moment we stepped off the bus at the show site. So many people were there that we hadn’t seen since drum corps! POC body time came though so we retreated to a hallway to warm up. And now… “Pride of Cincinnati, you make take the floor in prelims competition.” I began my show calm and collected. Nathan and I really connected when I jumped into his arms. We both began to dance to the corner of the floor and then we really connected. Quite literally he rammed his elbow into my face. My immediate thought was that my eyelashes fell off. Wait, I wasn’t wearing eyelashes… and then, as I sat in the corner with Nathan waiting for the rest of the guard to join us I realized my contact was resting on my cheek. Count one of the music came and I still hadn’t decided if I should try to put it back in and so it went falling to the floor and I knew it was lost from then on. Luckily I had the beginning dance section to get used to the difference in vision from eye to eye before I picked up my sabre. The first toss for me on my weapon came… whew, I didn’t have any trouble. With that obstacle overcome I thought it was free sailing the rest of the show. That is until I looked up before my flag double with a turn around and realized there was a sound speaker directly above me. Geeze! Was this American Gladiator winter guard edition? Finally the last moment of the show came. I actually had a pretty good show! It was definitely unforgettable. We finished up prelims by watching NEI. They better get it! They had a great run. We had a quick stop by a Piccadilly Market where we were teched on our slow ability to choose dinner entrees. I’m sorry we’d never been to one before, there was just so much to pick from. Now back to NSA for a quick rehearsal and back for our finals performance. I was unable to find another contact, but was confident it wouldn’t’ be much of an issue since I already performed one show half blind. POC body was amazing! We were all so exhausted that our crazy side was showing more than normal. Thank you Melissa for just letting us be out of control! “Pride of Cincinnati…” came for the final time that weekend and I took a deep breath… well that wasn’t so bad! It was definitely not as eventful as my prelims run. Kari decided to spice things up though by catching her flag toss with her lip. It didn’t work too well. And so the end of the competition came. Practically all of the Crown guard was reuinion-ing and so lots of camera flashes lit up the night. Back to NSA. Now, you think we’d be exhausted and pass out once our beat up bodies hit the blankets. Of course, this is not the POC way though, so we sat up creating play lists on my iPod for the following morning. Rehearsal on Sunday was undoubtedly interesting for a culmination of reasons. The flags in the ‘drag’ section of the show concentrated on learning a new double flag turn-around toss and rifles tossed approximately 9,000 sevens. We loaded up our luggage, packed away the tarp, and even sneaked a peak at some of NSA’s dancers, which were amazing. A few of us huddled around my laptop on the way home to obsess over ‘Re-Play’ on the Debby-GI site. By the time we arrived back in Cincy, nothing short of a hurricane was happening outside. The winds blew us on our way home where we would have a week to recover for yet another weekend of doing what we love! We missed our Charlie during the weekend, but a great deal of applause must go to Toni. She went above and beyond by watching after our butts. Thank you so much for an amazing Nashville regional!
Back to the 2008 Diaries page!
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