Something to prove
Headliners strive to keep up first-place finishes
By Jenny Welp Journal staff writer | Posted: Monday, March 26, 2007
After getting fifth place at one competition and being named grand champion at another, East High School's varsity show choir feels like it's got something to prove.
The date is Feb. 10, and the Headliners are on their way to their third competition. They want to make it clear that their first-place finish in Omaha wasn't a fluke.
This show choir, like others across the Midwest, was in the heart of competition season. It was taking its 20-minute song and dance routine on the road about every other weekend to see how its performance would stack up against show choirs from other high schools.
The night before the Headliners left for their third competition, soprano Kayla Lamoureux was so excited that she lay awake in bed until 2 or 3 o'clock in the morning.
"On Thursdays, it's always our big night to fix everything and just our last-minute cramming session, so I'd sit there and go over the changes in my head to make sure I wouldn't forget anything," the second-year Headliner said.
Lamoureux barely had time for a dream before getting up at 4:30 a.m. to plug in her curlers. A few hours later, she'd plop down beside Lydia Moes as the Headliners settled in for a two-hour charter bus ride to the competition at Okoboji High School in Milford, Iowa.
"So I sang my solo this morning and my voice cracked," Moes said.
"It's probably because it's morning," suggested student teacher Maggie McDermott.
"I hope so," said Moes, a second-year Headliner.
McDermott asked if anyone wanted a donut hole, and a few of the droopy-eyed teens took her up on the offer.
"Give me an H!" someone shouted, receiving a raucous response. "Give me an E! Give me an A! Give me a Duh-liners! What's that spell?"
"Head-duh-liners!" everyone yelled and burst out laughing.
Making an entrance
As the charter bus opened its doors outside Okoboji High School, the Headliners got ready to make their entrance.
The guys were wearing shirts and ties and the girls were wearing skirts or dress pants because their directors expected them to dress so they'd make a good impression as they walked into the school.
"I just think it sends a really classy image about who we are," said Heath Weber, who directs the Headliners with Marta Nelson. "It sets us up for something good."
Once they got settled at the school, Ben Miller went looking for the concession stand.
"The first order on the docket was to eat because the bus leaves at 6:30 in the morning means no breakfast for me," the first-year Headliner said. "I had two donuts and a bagel and a bottle of water. Getting pumped for a carb-free day. Oh, wait. No."
A show choir in costume walked past the cafeteria on its way into the auditorium, and the teens at Travis Biederman's table began to cheer. Asked where the show choir was from, this first-year Headliner said he didn't know.
"I have no idea who they were," he said. "We're just being good sports, I guess."
Soon Weber came along reminding the Headliners that they needed to be sure to be in the auditorium to see East High's Impulse perform at 11:05 a.m. The Headliners watched both of the East High junior varsity show choirs perform before competing in preliminaries themselves later in the afternoon.
It was the first time this year that the Headliners were at a competition with East High's junior varsity groups. Miller said he was excited for the Headliners to set an example of what show choir's all about -- being a great person both on and off stage.
"We come here. We get off the bus dressed up and ready to go," Miller said. "We go and we watch -- we support other show choirs. We do our best not to speak ill of any other show choir, no matter what kind of feelings we might have -- just keeping your mind on making sure you're not doing anything dumb that would make your director embarrassed of you."
While teens are out and about during the day, host schools sometimes have them leave their stuff in a classroom, but Okoboji had everyone use the gym as the home base.
That's where a couple of East High drummers could be found around lunch time, when they gathered around their school's drum set and started improvising soft but upbeat rhythms on the cymbals. Slowly, a crowd of Headliner guys formed a circle around the drum set, watching the drummers in the same way a person might check out a cool car.
"They're music geeks," explained clarinetist Michelle Bennett.
Getting ready for the show
By this time, quite a few Headliner girls were getting ready for their afternoon competition. Moes said it took her two hours to get fixed up, and she spent 90 percent of that time on her hair.
Every Headliner girl has to make her hair poofy and full of curls, whether her hair wants to be curly or not.
"I can't get my hair to look big," Megan Mosher said suddenly, her face flushed as she looked into a locker room mirror. "I just can't get it to curl!"
Mosher said her hair has never held much curl, and for some reason, this time the hot rollers didn't work at all. She took them out and her hair just went flat, and she had no time to do anything about it before the preliminary competition.
"I was very stressed out because the room mothers were going, 'Yip yip yip yip!' and telling you to tape your bra, get your makeup on and take your hair out and get your poof bigger and trying to fix you up," the first-year Headliner said.
Headliner moms are there at these competitions to help performers get ready, doing whatever they can to avert disaster when a crisis comes up. Often the moms will find a specific role they can play to help the day go smoothly, whether that means curling hair for the girls or doing safety-pin work for the guys so their shirts won't come untucked during a performance.
Carol Drilling is one of the moms who helps pack a suitcase full of items the girls might need as they're getting ready. She said if a girl asks for something that isn't in the suitcase, she makes sure that item is in there before the next competition.
"The only thing I haven't added is batteries," she said. "I refuse to do that."
But in Mosher's case, there really wasn't anything one could do, so she poofed her hair the best she could, put a smile on her face and headed out of the locker room. A friend promised to help fix her hair later if the Headliners made it to finals.
Keeping with tradition
Before the Headliners even walked into the warm-up room, Esther Moss knew the audience that afternoon would be comparing them to last year's Headliners, a more experienced group that went on to place second at a national competition.
"There are a lot of people who watch us from year to year, and they're looking to see exactly what they brought last year, which is a lot of energy and a great sound and strong choreography," the first-year Headliner said. "So people will just watch you, and it's very visible if it's not as strong as last year. They'll notice."
In the warm-up room, the teens did a little singing and dancing, and then Weber pumped them up almost like a coach at a sporting event.
Then the teens went out and performed for more than 500 people, and after their performance, one of the three judges came on stage to critique them.
"You allow me to be beyond picky, and we know that's what you want," said Tom Gerking, who teaches vocal music for Westwood Community Schools.
Gerking suggested everyone make sure they're expressing the same emotion on their faces at specific points in the music. He also asked the teens to have a little more fun while they're dancing, and he pointed to Biederman as an example.
"He just has excitement and energy on stage," Gerking said later. "He was totally into the song, and you knew that he was selling it 100 percent."
For Biederman, who had wondered if he was even good enough to be a Headliner, the comments meant a lot.
"I knew I could do it, but I wasn't too sure," Biederman said. "You know, it's like I knew I could get there if I tried, but it just seemed like I could never get there. It was really hard to get there. And finally, I practiced and practiced -- just like I said -- and it just came through for me."
Making finals
At the end of the preliminary competition, the Headliners learned that they were one of five groups to qualify for the finals competition, as was New Sound, one of East High's junior varsity groups.
As a matter of fact, the Headliners got the most points of any group in the preliminary competition, but all scores would be cleared for the five groups heading into finals.
There was barely time for a dinner break before the Headliners were back in the warm-up room, getting ready to compete for the grand champion title. Weber sensed their energy starting to fizzle, and he raised his voice to them.
"Put your brains on! You have not won yet!" he said.
Weber told them they had the competition at their fingertips, but they'd lose it if they thought they could just skate through because of their first-place finish in preliminaries.
Standing out in the hallway before finals, Ben Miller's mom said she was nervous. She'd be one of the moms helping the guys with their costume change.
In the middle of the Headliners routine, performers take turns going off stage and changing costumes during one of two short songs, each one about a minute-and-a-half in length. The girls completely change costumes, while the guys strip off one outfit that they're wearing on top of the other.
At this competition, Jenni Miller would be on one side of the stage making sure that the guys remembered to pull off their red ties, purple suit coats and pants, purple shirts, black socks and black shoes. She also had to make sure they pulled out the black bow ties from inside their shirts and put on the suit coats that are part of the second costume.
"It freaks me out every time I do it," she said. One boy forgot to take off his purple pants at the competition in Omaha.
Soon the Headliners took the stage, and they gave it their all.
When the awards were announced, the preliminary results held. The Headliners had won their second grand championship of the season.
Heading home
As the Headliners sat on the bus, getting ready to go home, Weber said he had to tell them something he was sure they'd end up hearing through the grapevine. An East High graduate discovered that a show choir director from another school had written on his contest program a nasty comment about the singing ability of the Headliners.
"People are gunning for you," Weber told them. "They don't want to see you do well."
Later Weber said that this director probably chose the Headliners to criticize because that day they were the ones at the top.
"We were on top of our game that day, and I think it's easy to start picking out faults in those groups that are at the top because everything is so good," he said. "You know, so, 'They are really good, but what can we pick out that they aren't doing right?'"
On the bus ride home from Okoboji High School that Saturday night, the Headliners listened to comments from the judges, watched a video of their performance and stopped at the Hy-Vee in Spirit Lake for food and drink.
Weber said the teens had been sweating buckets all day, especially the boys, who wear one suit on top of the other -- one of them being velvet. He said he was worried that they hadn't gotten enough to eat and to drink, and they might be getting dehydrated.
By the time the Headliners got home at around 1 a.m., they'd had a full 18-hour day.
"I'm really excited, but I'm so tired," Lamoureux said even before getting on the bus in Milford. "I can hardly keep my eyes open."
Since that competition at Okoboji High School, the Headliners have gone on to win every contest where they've competed except for one -- setting an all-time record for an East High show choir.
And even at the contest in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, where they got best vocals but were named runner-up overall, Weber said they still acted like winners.
"I said, 'So, what happens if we get first runner-up?' And they said, 'Well, I think we gave the best show we could have given, so it's OK.' There's such maturity that they had the wherewithal to be able to say, 'You know what? We did the best that we could have done. We couldn't have done any better. And if there's another choir that's better than us, then so be it. But right now, we did everything we could have done.'"
There are two more chances for people to see this year's Headliners perform in Sioux City:
-- Siouxland Sings at 4 p.m. April 29 will bring to the Orpheum Theatre stage the featured choirs from Sioux City's three public high schools, as well as the Siouxland Youth Choir. Admission is $10 for adults and $6 for seniors and students.
-- The Extravaganza at 7:30 p.m. April 2 in the East High School auditorium will feature the Headliners and East High's two junior varsity show choirs, New Sound and Impulse. Admission is $5.
The date is Feb. 10, and the Headliners are on their way to their third competition. They want to make it clear that their first-place finish in Omaha wasn't a fluke.
This show choir, like others across the Midwest, was in the heart of competition season. It was taking its 20-minute song and dance routine on the road about every other weekend to see how its performance would stack up against show choirs from other high schools.
The night before the Headliners left for their third competition, soprano Kayla Lamoureux was so excited that she lay awake in bed until 2 or 3 o'clock in the morning.
"On Thursdays, it's always our big night to fix everything and just our last-minute cramming session, so I'd sit there and go over the changes in my head to make sure I wouldn't forget anything," the second-year Headliner said.
Lamoureux barely had time for a dream before getting up at 4:30 a.m. to plug in her curlers. A few hours later, she'd plop down beside Lydia Moes as the Headliners settled in for a two-hour charter bus ride to the competition at Okoboji High School in Milford, Iowa.
"So I sang my solo this morning and my voice cracked," Moes said.
"It's probably because it's morning," suggested student teacher Maggie McDermott.
"I hope so," said Moes, a second-year Headliner.
McDermott asked if anyone wanted a donut hole, and a few of the droopy-eyed teens took her up on the offer.
"Give me an H!" someone shouted, receiving a raucous response. "Give me an E! Give me an A! Give me a Duh-liners! What's that spell?"
"Head-duh-liners!" everyone yelled and burst out laughing.
Making an entrance
As the charter bus opened its doors outside Okoboji High School, the Headliners got ready to make their entrance.
The guys were wearing shirts and ties and the girls were wearing skirts or dress pants because their directors expected them to dress so they'd make a good impression as they walked into the school.
"I just think it sends a really classy image about who we are," said Heath Weber, who directs the Headliners with Marta Nelson. "It sets us up for something good."
Once they got settled at the school, Ben Miller went looking for the concession stand.
"The first order on the docket was to eat because the bus leaves at 6:30 in the morning means no breakfast for me," the first-year Headliner said. "I had two donuts and a bagel and a bottle of water. Getting pumped for a carb-free day. Oh, wait. No."
A show choir in costume walked past the cafeteria on its way into the auditorium, and the teens at Travis Biederman's table began to cheer. Asked where the show choir was from, this first-year Headliner said he didn't know.
"I have no idea who they were," he said. "We're just being good sports, I guess."
Soon Weber came along reminding the Headliners that they needed to be sure to be in the auditorium to see East High's Impulse perform at 11:05 a.m. The Headliners watched both of the East High junior varsity show choirs perform before competing in preliminaries themselves later in the afternoon.
It was the first time this year that the Headliners were at a competition with East High's junior varsity groups. Miller said he was excited for the Headliners to set an example of what show choir's all about -- being a great person both on and off stage.
"We come here. We get off the bus dressed up and ready to go," Miller said. "We go and we watch -- we support other show choirs. We do our best not to speak ill of any other show choir, no matter what kind of feelings we might have -- just keeping your mind on making sure you're not doing anything dumb that would make your director embarrassed of you."
While teens are out and about during the day, host schools sometimes have them leave their stuff in a classroom, but Okoboji had everyone use the gym as the home base.
That's where a couple of East High drummers could be found around lunch time, when they gathered around their school's drum set and started improvising soft but upbeat rhythms on the cymbals. Slowly, a crowd of Headliner guys formed a circle around the drum set, watching the drummers in the same way a person might check out a cool car.
"They're music geeks," explained clarinetist Michelle Bennett.
Getting ready for the show
By this time, quite a few Headliner girls were getting ready for their afternoon competition. Moes said it took her two hours to get fixed up, and she spent 90 percent of that time on her hair.
Every Headliner girl has to make her hair poofy and full of curls, whether her hair wants to be curly or not.
"I can't get my hair to look big," Megan Mosher said suddenly, her face flushed as she looked into a locker room mirror. "I just can't get it to curl!"
Mosher said her hair has never held much curl, and for some reason, this time the hot rollers didn't work at all. She took them out and her hair just went flat, and she had no time to do anything about it before the preliminary competition.
"I was very stressed out because the room mothers were going, 'Yip yip yip yip!' and telling you to tape your bra, get your makeup on and take your hair out and get your poof bigger and trying to fix you up," the first-year Headliner said.
Headliner moms are there at these competitions to help performers get ready, doing whatever they can to avert disaster when a crisis comes up. Often the moms will find a specific role they can play to help the day go smoothly, whether that means curling hair for the girls or doing safety-pin work for the guys so their shirts won't come untucked during a performance.
Carol Drilling is one of the moms who helps pack a suitcase full of items the girls might need as they're getting ready. She said if a girl asks for something that isn't in the suitcase, she makes sure that item is in there before the next competition.
"The only thing I haven't added is batteries," she said. "I refuse to do that."
But in Mosher's case, there really wasn't anything one could do, so she poofed her hair the best she could, put a smile on her face and headed out of the locker room. A friend promised to help fix her hair later if the Headliners made it to finals.
Keeping with tradition
Before the Headliners even walked into the warm-up room, Esther Moss knew the audience that afternoon would be comparing them to last year's Headliners, a more experienced group that went on to place second at a national competition.
"There are a lot of people who watch us from year to year, and they're looking to see exactly what they brought last year, which is a lot of energy and a great sound and strong choreography," the first-year Headliner said. "So people will just watch you, and it's very visible if it's not as strong as last year. They'll notice."
In the warm-up room, the teens did a little singing and dancing, and then Weber pumped them up almost like a coach at a sporting event.
Then the teens went out and performed for more than 500 people, and after their performance, one of the three judges came on stage to critique them.
"You allow me to be beyond picky, and we know that's what you want," said Tom Gerking, who teaches vocal music for Westwood Community Schools.
Gerking suggested everyone make sure they're expressing the same emotion on their faces at specific points in the music. He also asked the teens to have a little more fun while they're dancing, and he pointed to Biederman as an example.
"He just has excitement and energy on stage," Gerking said later. "He was totally into the song, and you knew that he was selling it 100 percent."
For Biederman, who had wondered if he was even good enough to be a Headliner, the comments meant a lot.
"I knew I could do it, but I wasn't too sure," Biederman said. "You know, it's like I knew I could get there if I tried, but it just seemed like I could never get there. It was really hard to get there. And finally, I practiced and practiced -- just like I said -- and it just came through for me."
Making finals
At the end of the preliminary competition, the Headliners learned that they were one of five groups to qualify for the finals competition, as was New Sound, one of East High's junior varsity groups.
As a matter of fact, the Headliners got the most points of any group in the preliminary competition, but all scores would be cleared for the five groups heading into finals.
There was barely time for a dinner break before the Headliners were back in the warm-up room, getting ready to compete for the grand champion title. Weber sensed their energy starting to fizzle, and he raised his voice to them.
"Put your brains on! You have not won yet!" he said.
Weber told them they had the competition at their fingertips, but they'd lose it if they thought they could just skate through because of their first-place finish in preliminaries.
Standing out in the hallway before finals, Ben Miller's mom said she was nervous. She'd be one of the moms helping the guys with their costume change.
In the middle of the Headliners routine, performers take turns going off stage and changing costumes during one of two short songs, each one about a minute-and-a-half in length. The girls completely change costumes, while the guys strip off one outfit that they're wearing on top of the other.
At this competition, Jenni Miller would be on one side of the stage making sure that the guys remembered to pull off their red ties, purple suit coats and pants, purple shirts, black socks and black shoes. She also had to make sure they pulled out the black bow ties from inside their shirts and put on the suit coats that are part of the second costume.
"It freaks me out every time I do it," she said. One boy forgot to take off his purple pants at the competition in Omaha.
Soon the Headliners took the stage, and they gave it their all.
When the awards were announced, the preliminary results held. The Headliners had won their second grand championship of the season.
Heading home
As the Headliners sat on the bus, getting ready to go home, Weber said he had to tell them something he was sure they'd end up hearing through the grapevine. An East High graduate discovered that a show choir director from another school had written on his contest program a nasty comment about the singing ability of the Headliners.
"People are gunning for you," Weber told them. "They don't want to see you do well."
Later Weber said that this director probably chose the Headliners to criticize because that day they were the ones at the top.
"We were on top of our game that day, and I think it's easy to start picking out faults in those groups that are at the top because everything is so good," he said. "You know, so, 'They are really good, but what can we pick out that they aren't doing right?'"
On the bus ride home from Okoboji High School that Saturday night, the Headliners listened to comments from the judges, watched a video of their performance and stopped at the Hy-Vee in Spirit Lake for food and drink.
Weber said the teens had been sweating buckets all day, especially the boys, who wear one suit on top of the other -- one of them being velvet. He said he was worried that they hadn't gotten enough to eat and to drink, and they might be getting dehydrated.
By the time the Headliners got home at around 1 a.m., they'd had a full 18-hour day.
"I'm really excited, but I'm so tired," Lamoureux said even before getting on the bus in Milford. "I can hardly keep my eyes open."
Since that competition at Okoboji High School, the Headliners have gone on to win every contest where they've competed except for one -- setting an all-time record for an East High show choir.
And even at the contest in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, where they got best vocals but were named runner-up overall, Weber said they still acted like winners.
"I said, 'So, what happens if we get first runner-up?' And they said, 'Well, I think we gave the best show we could have given, so it's OK.' There's such maturity that they had the wherewithal to be able to say, 'You know what? We did the best that we could have done. We couldn't have done any better. And if there's another choir that's better than us, then so be it. But right now, we did everything we could have done.'"
There are two more chances for people to see this year's Headliners perform in Sioux City:
-- Siouxland Sings at 4 p.m. April 29 will bring to the Orpheum Theatre stage the featured choirs from Sioux City's three public high schools, as well as the Siouxland Youth Choir. Admission is $10 for adults and $6 for seniors and students.
-- The Extravaganza at 7:30 p.m. April 2 in the East High School auditorium will feature the Headliners and East High's two junior varsity show choirs, New Sound and Impulse. Admission is $5.
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East Fan wrote on Apr 3, 2007 12:50 AM: