BINGHAMTON 2000 -- February 19 - 20

"It was a dark and stormy night..."

reported by Candice Chan

Wow! The Cornell Team really had to brave all odds to get to this competition. Many of us woke up to a beautiful white, snow-covered Ithaca.  The previous night's snow storm managed to cover everything in sight burying many cars and driveways.  Josh and Candice were stuck shoveling snow and pushing the car.  Luckily with the help of a tiny flower pot of earth we managed to get the car out of the driveway.

Unfortunately, due to the weather Danny, Ellan, Nick and Wendy were unable to join us at the competition but our other competitors were Lance, Linda, Bernd, Daniela, Eray (well he's not ours) Josh and Candice and our wonderful coach tom -- [I hope we did him proud!]

The competition with Kay Teague running the show was amazingly fast. The day itself was VERY fast moving and well done. About 10 schools were in attendance.

RESULTS:

Great effort by our silver team members! Lance and Linda (in their first comp!) managed to get call backs! They competed in nearly everything except american smooth and rumba/chacha. The did fantastically well in samba/jive -- all that hard work really showed! Getting 2 callbacks! We look forward to seeing them compete in the future when they'll be even more spectacular!

Daniela and her partner (also in silver) from Syracuse did a excellent job as well -- despite difficulties in meeting up and practicing! They competed in mambo/swing and got callback to the semifinals, and made it to the semis of int'l rhumba/chacha as well! And in hustle although Eray only new 3 moves they got 5th amongst some stiff competition -- way to go!

Bernd (in bronze level) managed to find a partner for most of the dances including FOXTROT in which he got called back! His partner was very pleased as she had never been called back before!

Josh and Candice had a particularly successful run. First they got callbacks in every dance except int'l chacha, american rumba and american foxtrot. They also made it to the semis of int'l waltz, int'l quickstep and american tango finally placing 5th in int'l tango, 3rd in am swing, 2nd in int'l jive and 2nd in am cha cha.

Team results:

Oh what an EXCELLENT accomplishment for team. The team captain is excessively proud. Due to a slight lack of partners we had to adopt a couple -- jason and Des'ree from RUTGERS into our team -- they were silver and fantastic! They were also wonderfully nice pple -- I encourage pple who have yet to go to a comp this semester to go to RUTGERS.

American team:

foxtrot -- jason and desree
tango -- josh and candice
rumba -- lance and linda
swing -- eray and daniela
THE TEAM PLACES 5th!

International team:

quickstep -- jason and des'ree
waltz -- bernd and candice
chacha -- josh and daniela
jive -- lance and linda
THE TEAM PLACES 2nd!!! BEATING EVERYONE (INCLUDING BINGHAMTON) except MIT!!!

other dances:

Lance and his sister got placed in the rookie vet swing!!!!!!!! I can't remember what position it was but it was REALLY good!

Linda and Lance's sister got into the semis of the same-sex rumba

Lance and Linda made it to the semis of hustle!

Well that about wraps up the exciting and tiring day at binghamton. Comp ended at 10pm.