Since January, the girls have been practicing tremendously hard for a music competition here in Florida. I can honestly say that I am impressed with how much practice and effort they put into preparing for this competition. For me, that made the competition a winning experience, regardless of the ribbons.
They even practiced the night before at our hotel room :)
Shug watching the performance schedule.
We went into this competition with the mindset that this would be a “learning” year. The competition format has the students compete at what they call a regional festival. The top 2 scoring players for each grade level then proceed to the state competition. We thought, red ribbons/excellent marks would probably be a great place to aim for this year’s festival.
Both girls played considerably well, but I could tell by Tootle Bug’s face that she was upset about something the entire time she was playing. When she was done and the judges gave her back her music, she asked if we could go out of the room. When we got outside, she burst into tears and told me how this little girl that was sitting in the front row was giving her the stink eye throughout her performance. It rattled her and she knew she had not played her very best because of it.
Shug played a little later on, and gave a great performance – no stink eye for her.
At the end of the day, Shug was invited to play at the state competition, and Tootle was not. Tootle was encouraged though, that she did recieve an excellent ranking and only missed a superior ranking by 3-4 points. She says next year, she will compete at state. The girls also learned quite a bit about what to do about little girls that like to give the stink eye to others.
The state competition was about a month away, and Shug continued to practice her piece over and over….When the day of the competition finally arrived, she was nervous, but ready. She kept saying, “I still can’t believe I’m playing at state! I don’t care what ribbon I get, I’m just so excited to be here….But I hope I win.” Funny!
We had a bit of a rush getting to the venue, and finding an empty practice room so that Shug could warm up. Her performance room was actually running early, and as soon as we entered the room, they called her name to play! She gave the judges her music and sat down to play. She began playing and about 2 measures into her song one of the judges said in a nice, loud, intimidating voice, “Would you please introduce yourself so that we know who’s playing?”
Poor Sugar Belle… she got rattled. She introduced herself, and then started over again.
She did an awesome job!
The judges thought so too, she took second place, state-wide!
She was super excited and very pleased with all her hard work.
Of course Mr. OverKill and I are proud of her accomplishments, but are more proud of the time, effort, and discipline that she and her sister put in for this competition.