Proud Moments in Fatherhood

[Ran]

My 8 year old daughter came up with her own song parody. First, let me explain that she is obsessed with zebras. Her room, her clothes etc are all zebra related. Yes, it is annoying, but overall harmless. So naturally, she's not a fan of lions because they eat zebras.

What she did was change the words to Katy Perry's "Roar". She only does the chorus, but that's the only part of the song I can remember. It goes:

Keep your eye out for lions and tigers
Cuz I am a zebra
and you're going to hear me Neigh
Nay-nay-nay-nay Neigh.
Nay-nay-nay-nay Neigh.

I thought it was rather clever.

[Ran]

Ok, so that 8 year old in my last post just graduated high school and will be majoring in photography at UNLV. My other daughter just finished her architecture degree at UNLV and is going to grad school in Denver.

Bad news...I'm paying tuition for both. Good news...Sometime in the next 2 to 4 years, I get a man cave.

[Tom Foolery]

Haha. We all stopped being proud of our children for like a decade.

[vynsane]

Haha. We all stopped being proud of our children for like a decade.

no, just learned what "busy" REALLY means. remember in the past, like in your 20s, where you thought you were SOOOO busy? HAH, we were dumb.

[vynsane]

last week, my daughter's team competed in the world championship event for winterguard (color guard, but indoors and choreographed to prerecorded music instead of a marching band) in Dayton, OH. after a season of consistent first-place wins that began in january, the team performed in three rounds of championship competition against 115 other teams in their class in thursday prelims, then 56 teams in semis on friday afternoon, then the finals on friday night (yes, three performances in just over 24 hours). they had the top score in each round, culminating in a championship run for a crowd of at least 5000 people in the University of Dayton Arena with a score of 97.995, ending the season completely undefeated.

not only are they the best team the school district has ever seen, they're the top achievers of any team their director has ever worked with (in 31 years), and are the first champions from new york state in any class since 2009. the show is entitled "Lizzie" and is inspired by the trial of Lizzie Borden after the brutal axe murders of her step-mother and father of which she was accused, set to the Christina Aguilera song "Hurt". here are two videos of the same championship run - a "multi-cam" view that has a unique perspective and close-ups, and the "static cam" view which allows you to see the over-all choreography and layering a bit better.

i'm so proud i even fixed the youtube embed tag!

multi-cam view (Julia is featured in a close-up towards the beginning):



static-cam



there is also a playlist of all their major competitions from 2022, 2023, and 2024. in 2022, the director only took them to one major regional competition, and was incredibly surprised at how well they did (he didn't think they were going to make finals). last year, he took them to Dayton, and they made it through prelims and semis only to be just edged out for finals - literally 21st out of 20 that advance. to then sweep the entire thing this year, it's been a really incredible trajectory of progress.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... CXCKQJKRRC

[vynsane]

no one cares?

[Tom Foolery]

no one cares?

I did. I started watching it when you posted it, then got sidetracked by some family drama and paused it 30 seconds in and didn’t get back to it until just now. [sheepish]

That’s pretty dope. It’s great how the audience gets pumped up. I’m always fascinated by the evolution of competitions like these. And the fact that enough schools are like ‘what if we made THIS competitive?’

What were some of the other routines like?

I want someone to do an interpretation of the intro to The A-Team. “A crack commando team was sent to prison by a military court for a crime they didn’t commit…”

[Ran]

That was pretty cool. I can't even imagine how many hours of practice that took. My youngest daughter started gymnastics when she was 2 and did it until she graduated high school last year. By the end, she was in the gym 4 hours a day 4 or 5 days per week just practicing floor, bars, vault, and balance beam.

She is now in college and majoring in photography. We went to Boulder City a few weekends ago so she could take photos for an assignment. Part of the assignment was to photoshop the images together. The main part of the series did some stuff with aliens. There was an antique store that had life size statues of the Blues Brothers and Darth Vader. She photoshopped them in front of a bus stop. I'll post it later.

[vynsane]

oh, i know, it's insane how you get involved in something like this and discover that it is literally someone else's ENTIRE life. when my daughter was doing it in middle school, we were like "that's cute". then to find out that it's an activity like this...

there are 6 different divisions, 3 "scholastic" (meaning high school or lower) and 3 "independent" (college-age and beyond). within those two major dividing lines, both have "A", "Open" and "World" class. Julia's team won "Scholastic A" and so next year they are bumped up to "Scholastic Open" which should be interesting. the shows run the gamut, there are those that are still like "that's cute" and then some that are insane. case in point:



they were in Scholastic World and came in 5th in 1995. this was banned from some schools. also, the person who gets "hung" is apparently the coach/director of the team.

here's one of the fan favorites, but they don't get great scores for whatever reason.



this one was my favorite from last year. this year, they won but it's not as fun. still a good show:



i can't find it on youtube, but i grabbed the finals for the teams who came in 2nd (Lockport, IL) and 3rd (Holly Springs, NC). they're here in my onedrive along with some others from this year:

https://1drv.ms/f/s!AuCtJ6006ZMIkepSzCs ... g?e=6673Z8

Main Line Independent was my favorite of the shows i saw this year. they're not a high scorer either (they won all the competitions we saw them at, but apparently in comparison to others they rank lower), and had a pretty bad run in the finals with a lot of drops. that doesn't count for as much of a penalty as you'd think, but they can add up. the one in there from Mohanasen (they're a NY team as well, that is sort of our "sister school in winterguard") is a really rookie team, they have no upperclassmen on the team, all freshmen and sophomores. they got "preliminated" and didn't proceed to semi-finals, but they will be a force to be reckoned with in two years. they remind me of our team from 2022. green, but with lots of potential.

[vynsane]

That was pretty cool. I can't even imagine how many hours of practice that took.

they also all do the marching band, which starts in july and runs through october, with weekly practice until the start of the school year, then twice a week. but they also have two weeks of mon-fri 9-5 band camp in august (one week of which also coincides with the county fair where my daughter shows chickens and sheep). then they start winterguard practice once a week from november until january, then they had at least two practices a week during the season proper - one on wednesday night, one on saturday morning before competitions, and every other friday night, plus a competition almost every saturday. my wife did the math and they have at least one practice a week for 50 weeks out of the year.

My youngest daughter started gymnastics when she was 2 and did it until she graduated high school last year. By the end, she was in the gym 4 hours a day 4 or 5 days per week just practicing floor, bars, vault, and balance beam.

yeah, i've heard gymnastics is absolutely insane. my daughter tried it, but was too scared. she was into dance instead, until middle school. then she found this.

She is now in college and majoring in photography. We went to Boulder City a few weekends ago so she could take photos for an assignment. Part of the assignment was to photoshop the images together. The main part of the series did some stuff with aliens. There was an antique store that had life size statues of the Blues Brothers and Darth Vader. She photoshopped them in front of a bus stop. I'll post it later.

HA! that's awesome. can't wait to see it.

[Diabolical]

no one cares?

I do.
I was at work when I saw the post and wasn't able to watch it then.
Extremely impressive.
It looks hard enough to do something like that alone. I can't imagine what it takes to do while in sync with others.