On Saturday, Oct. 18, Marching Cougar Pride and 24 other bands attended the Festival of Champions, held in Warrensburg, MO. For the first time in six years, SMNW was back at this marching festival. The band and dancers had set high expectations for themselves.
They hoped for a flawless performance.
They hoped to make finals.
But then the rain came.
“We were soaked – I wish that we could have performed on a dry field. But, unfortunately, that was not in the cards for us,” junior Moira Sterwart said.
The whole week leading up to the festival, directors warned of rain.
“But I was in denial,” senior dance team captain Mallory O’Neal said. “There was no way our performance would be rained out.”
The band and dance team still practiced as if they would be performing in any other festival. Monday, Wednesday and Friday, the dancers lugged their flags and props onto the track at 7 a.m., with unsoaked shoes.
The day of the festival, the 145 buzzing band members loaded into their buses at noon.
“When we got there. We ran over our flag choreography. And then it just started pouring. Our flags were sitting out, so our flag bags got soaked,” junior Moira Stewart said.
Through the sticky and slippery practice, they were waved on to perform. They grabbed their flags and orange ponchos and stepped off of the bus. And just as they were about to head to the stadium —
“They had stopped all the performances, because there was such bad lightning,” O’Neal said.
Impatiently and irritated, the band members stepped back onto the buses to sit and wait. The dancers knew what needed to be done. They turned on the Hamilton soundtrack. And after assigning singing parts, they belted to “Alexander Hamilton,” “The Schuyler Sisters” and “My Shot.”
That’s when band director Brett Eichman stood up and said, “Okay, we’re gonna do it! We’re gonna go right now!”
The dancers began to fill up with nervousness that soon started to overflow.
“There was a lot of trepidation,” dance team coach Christin LaMourie said. “They were very nervous, because when the silk of the flag gets wet. It sticks to itself. It sticks to the pole. It sticks to you. But we just said, ‘You just gotta put on the show that you can. And do the best that you can.’”
The flag bags, now filled with water, added even more weight on the girls’ shoulders.
“I straightened my hair that morning,” O’Neal said. “But it got all poofy. Our makeup was not holding up well. The field was all soppy. Everything was just wet. Even our jazz shoes. But, we just accepted it and performed the best that we could have.”
Nonetheless, the 10 Varsity Cougar Classics marched onto the field and assumed their starting set. Through the 11-minute show, the dancers morphed into the four elements; air, earth, water and fire. As they struck and swayed to the music, it finally came to an end.
“Standing in the front and watching the show I was super proud and really impressed,” LaMourie said. “I didn’t notice any differences from the wetness or the rain.”
The dancers, though, did, showering LaMourie with comments on their way off the field.
‘Oh, my God, did you see I dropped my flag?’
‘Oh, my gosh, did you see that my pole got stuck here?’
‘I literally slipped on the silk of my flag!’
“From an audience perspective, you didn’t necessarily notice each individual problem. It still looked like a great show,” Lamourie added.
After their performance, the band sat down in the bleachers to watch other bands. Show after show, high schoolers’ hair began rising into the clouds. Literally.
“That’s one of the signs of static electricity that lightning’s in the area,” Lamourie said. “It was definitely a safety concern, especially when you have metal instruments and metal poles that you’re waving around. It’s scary.”
Without hesitation, the band members bolted into the University of Central Missouri’s student union. Still in their wet uniforms, they sat and waited some more, with their flags. Without phones, and unaware of the time, the pizza they ordered seemed to be taking an eternity to get there. The directors and drum majors entered into a private room to receive their awards. In the end, Northwest took 5th, which meant they would have competed in finals. But, that was rained out.
“I believe that the rain affected our placement, because if the weather would have been better, then me and the rest of the dance team would have done a lot better. It’s unfortunate,” Stewart said.
Then, a week later, when Northwest planned to compete again in Independence, KS it rained. Again.
“They didn’t think that the weather would get bad again,” Stewart said. “And then it did.”
