Davenport North

This year Happiness traveled to Davenport to attend Davenport North’s competition called Big Dance. After our success at Linn-Mar, we were pretty confident in our show. Before we performed, I didn’t even have those pesky first year jitters! I was back to my semi-nervous self.

Davenport was a fairly small competition and didn’t have too much competition for Happiness. Lacrosse and maybe Jefferson was our biggest competition. We were pretty nervous about going against Lacrosse because we had heard they’re really good this year and after getting second at Linn-Mar, we were confident in our show, but there was that little doubt when we heard about Lacrosse. They have traditionally been good. I didn’t get a chance to see their show before we performed in the day rounds, but a few people in the group did and they informed us that they were pretty good, but not amazing. Someone we could beat if we really wanted to.

In our warm-up, our director gave us his regular speech about us going out there to do the best show we can. We can’t control the judges or the other groups, but to control the things we can. Happiness has always been known for our entertaining show. We always have the show that the audience enjoys watching the most. That’s what we need to strive to achieve. To have the best show, the one the audience watches and loves. Not have the attitude that we need to get first. That’s what Happiness has always been about and that’s what it’s going to always be about.

We went out there and did an amazing show. We ended up placing first in the day rounds by 18 points. It was a good feeling. We all wanted it to stay that way and not have a reenactment of Linn-Mar where we got first in the day rounds and second after finals. Our director gave another speech about wanting to know what it feels like to get first before March. Happiness typically doesn’t do as well in their first couple competitions. In past years it’s taken them a couple tries to figure out the formula for success. We all wanted a win this time.

We finally got a grand champion trophy! To top it all off we won a caption award as well for best choreography. It was such a good feeling to finally do so well, especially right out of the gate. We won by 15 points and it felt good.