Overall, GOT was an interesting experience. I would like to preface this by saying, while there were some issues that we ran into along the way (will get into those), the committee did do a really good job of responding as well as they possibly could to our concerns. Now for the rundown:
Mixer: I wasn't there but the team said that they had a really good time so props to the committee for that.
Post-mixer practice: We were given a massive mirrored room, technically for 45 minutes, but since no one kicked us out we ended up staying a couple hours. I'm not sure if all the teams got the same or similar room, but this was an amazing room to have the night before and definitely helped get ready for comp day.
Tech time: This is where stuff started getting bad for us. Our liaison was MIA once we got to the venue so we were a little confused on the logistics for the tech time. Not a big deal because other committee members were there to kind of guide us through. At tech time, since we were first, the tech crew ran into some major lighting issues. Basically, we were told while we were on stage that the lighting cues were not programmed in at the start of our tech time, and the tech crew essentially told us to run our tech time without lights. The committee responded well however, and gave us a few extra minutes on stage to try and sort out the lights (which never ended up getting sorted out), and allowed us to meet with the tech crew before the show to go over our cues again. For future, and for other comps, please make sure that you are in constant communication with the tech crew to ensure that lighting cues are programmed in and tested before tech times. With such limited time on stage, even wasting 2 mins standing around while the tech crew figures out what is going on makes a really big difference.
Lunch: I don't know how accurate this is, but we were told by our liaison that "Chick Fil A was provided and that it accounted for vegetarians"..... We had no idea what that meant and none of us wanted fried food the day of the comp, so we all bought our own stuff and headed to the hotel. Again, not a huge issue but definitely something that should have been thought about prior.
Pre-comp: This was by far the worst part for us. Being first in the show, we were never told when to be ready by. We only assumed to be ready at the start of the show (6:30 pm) and then wait to see when we would actually go on stage. We kept asking our liaison for updates on if things were running on time and for 1 hr, 45 min, etc. updates on when to be ready (all of which are very reasonable requests - we just wanted simple updates). He kept trying to find out and heard nothing from the committee about any time updates. The very first contact we had with any committee member from about 1 pm to taking stage was when they ran to our dressing area and said "be backstage in 5 mins or you're losing points". This was ridiculous for us because no one on the team was ready mentally, physically, etc. to take stage at that time. We had a decent amount of new dancers, who were already nervous about competing for the first or second time, and this situation just made it that much worse for the entire team.
Competition: Audience was about 1/3 full whenever we performed and probably got to 2/3 to 3/4 full by about midway through. Definitely a solid turnout, especially for a second year comp. I would maybe recommend trying to find a different venue than a high school auditorium for future years, however - obviously this is based entirely on availability but definitely would be dope to perform elsewhere.
Judges Meeting: This was the best part of the weekend. I wanna give a huge shoutout to Howie, Keshav, Lavesh, Harjot, and Arnab. The judges meeting we had this time was probably one of the best meetings I have personally been to. They did a fantastic job of not focusing on stuff that we already knew (ex. dropped khunde, chaadre issues, etc.), and gave us a lot of good advice that was tailored to the fact that we are competing again in 2 weekends. They all had very different backgrounds in bhangra, but all managed to successfully stick to the same rubric and still critique us through many different perspectives. The committee also did a great job making sure we had our questions answered during the meeting and didn't try to rush us out once the timer went off (which has happened many times before).
Afterparty: lit. buses were clutch. well done.
Overall:
Again, things went wrong but the committee did do a great job of responding to issues that came up. We understand sometimes things don't go as planned (ex. tech time), but we did appreciate the committee helping out the best way that they could. Biggest overall issue we had for the weekend was the lack of communication between the committee, our liaison, and our team. But oh well, s**t happens, we had a good time.
Also, huge S/O to Hardik (CMU, FCB) for tying my pagh in like 5 minutes. And S/O to FCB, NJ, and VSB on well-deserved placings, as well as all other teams for putting on sick performances.
They were okay with us staying for a long period of time and that helped us get through all our runs faster without having to switch spaces.