THE ROAD TO NDA NATIONALS 2011 ~ CALENDAR CRAZY

Well, one week later and our holiday season schedule is set. All we have to say is whew!! A few of our members just returned from the University of Louisville last weekend, cheering on our Huskies. The football game didn't go our way, but we looked great and had a blast despite the 16-hour bus ride!!  Check out our photo from Louisville....

This weekend, we get to perform in the halftime show on Friday night with the UCMB (University of Connecticut Marching Band)! This is a first for our program, and we hope to continue the collaboration with them. This has been a season of collaborations for us- together we are stronger! Next week, men's and women's basketball kicks off and we are really pumped about that.

At practice, we've been doing some intense muscle training, targeting lower body strength. We've been working on our hips, thighs, calfs, abs, and glutes. We're also currently in the process of finding some time in our already crazy schedules to hit the weight room. By April, we'll be in peak physical condition!! Photos from our training session are below. We're cleaning and learning game dances, and it always seems like there's not enough time to accomplish all the things we have to do. 

On to nationals preparations- after a long (but good!) debate, we chose our jazz song! We're excited about it and ready to learn from Kyle (who was just on Glee, by the way!!). He's coming from LA in November and we can't wait. Since we've chosen a song, we have already begun searching for costumes. Obviously we will wait until we have the choreography, but its never too early to start looking (color, style, rhinestones, sequins- yay!). We reviewed 3 ideas last night, and will be scouring the internet for more ideas. For hip hop, we have a really unique concept so it was exciting to talk about costuming. Coach brought tons of ideas to chat about and we started the process of selecting a direction for our hip hop outfit. It's going to be epic :-) Finally, our second quote was revealed last night! By April, we will have lots of things to reflect upon and we will be able to look back on all of our hard work. Watch the video to see our quote reveal for the week..........

QUOTE FOR OCTOBER 28, 2010 ~ WEEK 2 OF 24

"Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts."

Week 1 of 24

THE ROAD TO NDA NATIONALS 2011 ~ ITS ONLY JUST BEGUN

We are busy, busy, busy! As football season is underway and basketball season begins, we are spending most of our rehearsals learning new material for our games. We have started the process of nationals planning, though. We have selected our jazz choreographer- Kyle Hill!! He will be coming in November to teach us. Currently, we're in the process of nailing down a song. We have 2 awesome (but very different) choices thus far. As for hip hop, we have an awesome concept that we are pumped about and are waiting on our music from the DJ. We are facing a few challenges as we start our journey-- we've lost 2 very amazing team members who we will miss like crazy!! We definitely have issues finding a place to practice, therefore limiting our practice times to twice a week for 2 hours. It is HARD to do technique, learn game choreography, and have "team time" in this amount of time- but we definitely try to make the best of it. In addition, we travel to every away football game so things are a bit crazy :-)

We had an AMAZING performance at our First Night (sort of like "Midnight Madness")!! We did a collabo with the cheerleaders and it was phenomenal. We are definitely using each performance as a stepping stone to nationals. We upped our performance quality, and delivered an exciting, energetic performance that our fans loved. We left the floor with so much love and passion for performing and for our team- AND we got to debut the silver sparkle half tops that we've been working really hard to look great in! It was really fun to perform with cheer as well. Definitely looking forward to performing with cheer at a Boston Celtics game in January!!!!!

We are loving our team and really focusing on staying drama-free and keeping our road to nationals nice and smooth! We want this to be an amazing and memorable ride, and we know that it will take all 16 members and our fabulous coach to make it happen. Stay tuned each week for more updates, and enjoy our weekly quotes!

QUOTE FOR OCTOBER 24, 2010 ~ WEEK 1 OF 24

You are not given the people you want in life. You are given the people you need...to help you, to hurt you, to love you, to leave you, and to make you into the person you were meant to be.

UCDT <3