Ah, show choir. The beautiful activity where you can make all the predictions in the world, but a few hours on a Saturday afternoon or evening can erase all of that and puts everybody back at square one. Week one of the 2024 season was full of surprises, and we’ve got it all covered.
Ankeny Centennial Mid-Iowa Show Choir Championships Final Results
GC: Linn-Mar “10th Street Edition” (BV/BC/BB)
1RU: Waukee Northwest “Eos”
2RU: La Crosse Central “Grand Central Station”
3RU: Sioux Falls Jefferson “Legacy”
4RU: Linn-Mar “In Step”
5RU: Waukee Northwest “Aurora”
Ankeny Centennial had perhaps the least amount of surprises, but the competition results still provide plenty of insight into Midwest show choir for the year. Linn-Mar extended its win streak to 11, and they seem poised to run the country yet again until further notice. Their show, seemingly a backstory to the children’s book Goodnight Moon, is very tight for the first weekend of January and will be adjacent to the thick of things this weekend as a host. Waukee Northwest, while coming up short on the captions side, is also primed for a season among Iowa’s top players. La Crosse Central and Sioux Falls Jefferson part ways, and both will run fairly detached schedules from their respective circuits. In the undercard divisions, Linn-Mar completed a sweep of the competitions, as In Step and Hi-Style came out on top of the prep and womens divisions, respectively.
Holmen Gathering Final Results
GC: Waconia “Power Company” (BV/BB)
1RU: Onalaska “Hilltoppers”
2RU: Cedar Rapids Washington “Momentum”
3RU: Sauk Prairie “Executive Session”
4RU: Sparta “Upstage Adrenaline”
5RU: Reedsburg “Choraliers”
In what has become an entertaining mini-rivalry in the Upper Midwest this past handful of years, Waconia takes another battle over Onalaska. PoCo, which performed an end-of-the-world-themed show, received a time penalty in the preliminary round but still held onto first place, and with no penalty in finals, remained the class of the field for the win. Onalaska and Washington were close, with the Hilltoppers jumping Momentum in the evening rounds. Sauk Prairie, whose showsical this year is All Shook Up, and Sparta got a good look at each other before multiple other head-to-head contests this year, including Onalaska this weekend. Reedsburg beat eight other varsity groups for the last finals spot, including Tomah, the winner of the event last year, and Neenah, whose 30-point time penalty dropped them from right in the mix to 11th place.
Des Moines Christian Illumination Final Results
GC: Waukee “Millennium” (BV/BC/BB)
1RU: Indianola “Side One”
2RU: Marion “New Creation”
3RU: El Paso-Gridley “Modulations”
4RU: Cedar Rapids Jefferson “West Side Delegation”
5RU: Xavier “Xhilaration”
What change a year brings to this event. Waukee came out on top, as many expected, but behind that was a little bit of a reshuffling of last year’s rankings. Marion and Indianola, who split captions at Illumination last year, flipped spots, as Side One came out ahead of New Creation this year. It was an emphatic debut for Myles Finn at the head of Side One after previously directing Indianola’s prep choir, Flip Side, for five years. Jonathan and Meegan Dyrland are still doing more with less at Marion, one of the top 3A schools in the state. El Paso-Gridley takes home a solid placing, and Cedar Rapids Jefferson got some nice momentum to start off their season, beating Xhilaration after losing to them at Marion in late February 2023. Of the groups that missed finals, Dallas Center-Grimes and O’Gorman will have a rough go of it again this next weekend, with DCG one of many mixed choirs at Waukee and O’Gorman in a similar situation at Sioux Falls Jefferson.
Comps of the Week will be back in the middle of the week this week with more of the nation’s best show choir action!
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