Valentine's Day with my girls

Happy Valentine's Day!  I hope yours was spent with loved ones, doing things appropriate to your own personal level of mushiness.
As for myself, I spent it with four of the most wonderful girls in Breckenridge, and the most wonderful woman I have ever had the pleasure of starting a dance company with.  At 7 am we all met at Party Planet, and loaded up into the Van.  Four girls, two coaches, one mom, 3 pillows and blankets, 8 costumes, 12 pairs of dance shoes, a dozen powdered doughnuts, 6 chocolate covered strawberries, 2 sparkly backpacks, 3 makeup bags, two cans of hairspray, and a partridge in a pear tree!  Wait....wrong holiday, sorry.
We drove all the way down to Killeen, TX, about 3 hours away, just north of Austin, for the Heart of Texas Classic ADT competition.  This was our first time performing lyrical as well as hip hop, and Leslie and I were definitely a little nervous.  I don't know much about the Texas dance scene, and Leslie doesn't know much about dance outside of cheer, and it was our first experience with ADT.  We really didn't quite know what to expect.  After stopping for breakfast in this totally random little cafe, we were running late, so I started braiding hair in the back of the van.  A word to the wise: Don't spray hairspray in the back of a hot van.  It's just not fun. 
We rolled in around 11, and we were set to perform lyrical at 1:12.  Hair and makeup was really a breeze, and with only four girls we had plenty of room in our classroom to practice without having to go out into the hallways.  The girls were enamored of an older girl who was practicing her solo in the hall.  She was dancing to the song Addison sang for the talent show, so that just made it even better.
12:45 rolled around, and it was go time!  The ladies running the practice gym very generously allowed us to sneak in a practice between the big teams (as a small ensemble we didn't get a real practice time), which was more important than I realized it would.  A minute into their practice, the music shut off.  The girls tripped over their feet and stopped and stared at me. 
"If the music stops, you keep going.  You do NOT stop dancing!"
"This stereo is just really old.  Your CD should be fine in the auditorium, don't worry about it!"
Fast forward to standing in the wings.
There is something magical about being backstage.  I love it.  I like to watch from the side, I love seeing the backstage rituals that happen, stretching, planks, last minute whispered questions and assurances, silent applause...it's one of my favorite places to be.
Leslie and I stood backstage with the girls, and watched them go on and start lyrical.  There was a collective "awww!" as they took the stage.  Their performance was set in the middle of a bunch of high school solos, and they were beautiful little girls in their purple dresses and braids.  They won the hearts of the audience from the very beginning.
Then, about a minute in, the music stopped.
I will not repeat on the internet what the only word we exchanged was before I went running down the stairs to the music table.  I whipped out my phone and I know I spoke with the music girl and announcer, but I have no idea what I said.  I just remember looking up and realizing that the girls were still dancing, and were completely together.  Addison told us later that Lilly had started singing and they just kept going.  Thank goodness we were given practice time, so they knew what to do!  Everyone was cheering and clapping, and the announcer said "thank you girls, you can stop now.  We'll start over."
It wasn't perfect, but all things considered, it was amazing.  It was possibly the best I have seen them do, and they recovered so well.  This audience was much smaller than our previous audiences, but they were great.  They cheered and clapped and the girls faces were shining.
On the way back to the room we had to pass by the practice gym again and the nice ladies asked how we did.
"themusicstoppedandwekeptgoingandzoedidatoetouchthingandpeopleCLAPPEDforherandweweresogood!!"
Back in the room to change, scarf down some chicken nuggets, crazy up the hair, touch up the makeup, have some dance battles, and off we go!  We stopped at the practice gym again to give the girls a chance to do some back handsprings and practice the pop ups, and we had our next "oh crap" moment.  Lilly somehow had forgotten how to jump up off the floor.  While Zoe and Kam were showing the high school girls how to do it, Lilly was getting more and more frustrated.  They have to roll back on their backs, and then throw their feet up and forward to push themselves up onto their feet and stand up.  Does that make sense?  Anyway, Lilly was having trouble with it in practice last week, but she was tired and sore, and we were sure that she would be fine the day of.  She was the first one to figure it out, after all, and is very capable.  But suddenly she just couldn't do it, and was very upset by it.  I have never seen Lilly not happy, and I was worried that she was just not going to be able to shake it off.
We walked back into the auditorium and people started clapping.  There was a huge team over on one side that stood up to cheer for them, and we hadn't even gotten on stage yet.  I didn't even want to risk the CD not working, so I hugged them all and ran down to the music table.  As the girls walked on, the audience exploded.  I didn't have to do anything.  Usually I try to get their attention, try to get them to smile and keep their energy up...There was no way they were gonna look at me.  For 2 minutes they were celebrities.  I can't even begin to describe the euphoria that I felt, and I can only imagine how the girls felt!  They fed off that energy and it was amazing.  Again, it wasn't perfect, but as we told them, the crowd loved them, so who cares what the judges thought?
It may have been the best moment in my dancing career.
After a while, the girls went back inside to watch, and to thank their fans, and when we went back inside, we found them sitting right in the middle of the Midway Goaltenders.  They were just chillin, hanging out, talking, taking selfies and exchanging phone numbers.  The high school girls raved about them and adored them.  Their hair, their dancing, their costumes, their choreography (not mine, btw), everything.  You could not ask for better fans.

I had to stalk them a little bit after we left so I could send an FB message to their coach, to tell her how wonderful her dancers are and thank her.  But it wasn't just the dancers.  We had a couple parents from that team come up and talk to us about them.  It was crazy.  I never would have imagined that our little team would be noticed, much less celebrated this way.  Of course, being young made them endearing, having their music cut out made them memorable, continuing to dance made them impressive, and tumbling made them totally gangster swagalicious cool.
Unfortunately, the competition did not end until 11:15 pm, and we had a three hour drive to get home, so we were not able to stay for awards.  But we got our results from the competition director before we left, and were so excited to take them out to dinner and present them with not just a second place trophy, but the first place as well!
I guess I forget that they are 11.  Their scores were 90 and 95, and I  were great athletes, and I am just used to working with older girls.  They really have worked very hard, and I can't wait to see what they will accomplish in the future.
I am one very proud coach, or "director", as they say in Texas.  It sounds so fancy!  As Kam says, Brownings don't come to participate, they come to win.
Nobody beats us but us!  It's a good day to be a Browning.

Post by BYC Dance Company.