Dance, Dance, Dance...

After all the practicing and last minute details, packing lists and uniform mishaps, June 20th, the first day of Dance Camp, arrived. The toughest part of my day was saying goodbye to Duane and the girls. Duane took a few days off to stay home with him and his mom drove in from Oklahoma but I have NEVER left the girls overnight. I'm sure I drove Duane nuts with all my instructions, none of which he really needed, but he humored me. :) After managing to shove all the gear and food that 16 pre-teen girls require into 5 different vehicles and making a quick stop at Starbucks, we hit Hwy 98 to Panama City Beach and the Edgewater Resort. After arriving and signing in, the girls started right into choreography and technique classes with the home routine competition that night. We soon realized that we were the youngest girls at the camp with the majority of teams in our division being from Jr. High (7th, 8th, and 9th grades) compared to our Middle School team (6th, 7th, and 8th grades) and that we were at the camp with the defending national champions for the last 5 years in addition to some very strong teams with long running programs. The girls were definitely intimidated but they stuck it out. Dance camp is no joke for those of you who think it might include a lot of flitting around in pretty little ballet outfits. The girls dance from 8:00am until 9:00pm with brief lunch and dinner breaks and are expected to practice with their coaches after they finish their 9:00 pm class. To describe the whole experience would take a book, so I will just sum it up:

• I am now completely positive that my 2 little girls will be enough. After spending 4 days with 16 pre-teens, making sure they shower, making their breakfast and keeping track of their things, not to mention keeping them away from the Babe Ruth baseball tournament boys who were also staying at the resort, I am EXHAUSTED!
• I will be investing in ear plugs when my own daughters reach middle school. It seems that EVERYTHING a pre-teen girls says must be said in a screech or a squeal........
• In spite of the aforementioned distractions, the girls did amazingly well....better than I could ever have expected. As a brand new team at a very competitive camp, I did not expect anything at all except for them to be exposed to other dancers and instructors. We walked away with a 3rd place Trophy for our home routine, a Superior Team trophy for the most amount of blue ribbons of any team in the division, 2 of my girls made the national All Star team, we received our bid to Nationals at Disney World on ESPN and an invite to the Capital One Bowl performance. I could never have imagined how well the girls would do! I am very proud of them and VERY, VERY tired.