Overall, Illini Bhangra had a great experience at NDC.
We got to the hotel Friday right before the mixer (dragging ass is standard practice for our team lol). Our liasions met us in the lobby and helped us get settled in and gave us a case of water bottles which was clutch. Only issue we had with the hotel (applies to mixer and comp too) was that we weren't told that parking wouldn't be covered. Mandatory valet parking ended up being very very costly for the weekend.
Mixer was alright. Food was pretty damn good. The emcee didn't have a mic lmao so it ended up being pretty disorganized and hard to get people's attention. Probably caused the mixer to go a bit longer than it would have otherwise. We played some relay race games to determine the lineup order, and from there they opened up the dance floor for a bit while the captains went to the judges meeting. At the meeting, there weren't any packets/rubrics that were provided for us to follow along with which made the initial judges meeting kind of difficult to take in. I also probably would've liked to see some sort of dancing mixer game. The point of the mixer is to "mix" with other teams, and while we took some initiative to talk to other teams there, just opening the dance floor didn't really give too much of an opportunity to interact with people outside of our own team. In fact, at that point, most of the teams just waited for their captains to get back and then left. Having a dancing mixer game is probably the easiest way to fix this.
After the mixer, we practiced in the lobby of the student union. I'm not sure what other teams experiences were with post mixer practice, but it would've been nice to have a bit more space to go through formations and what not. I understand it's a college campus and reserving spaces for anything is always a hassle (especially after hours), but looking into booking some larger spaces on campus might be beneficial in the future.
Comp day went pretty smoothly. Our liasions brought us bagels in the morning for breakfast which was awesome. Tech time ran mostly on time and we had ample time to do what we needed to get done. After tech we were given some time to practice in a dance room before we headed back to the hotel.
Back at the venue before the comp, we were given a dance room to get ready in. We had to share with two other teams, but there was more than enough space so there wasn't much of a problem.
Comp ran on time and ended at a reasonable time.
Judges meeting was helpful, there was enough time for the judges to get all their feedback in, and we allowed to record the meeting too which was good to have.
Overall, congratulations to the NDC board for a successfully run competition. Congratulations to Rutgers on the placing and the other competing teams for bringing fire sets. Can't wait to see you guys again throughout the season. Special thanks to Sid, Kuntal, and Saab for providing us with a lot of great feedback as we move forward with our season. We would also like to thank our liasions, Thanvi and Sandhya, for tolerating our obnoxious team for the weekend helping us out with whatever we needed. Finally, shoutout to Mitra Patel for being a dope hype man for the weekend and helping us tie some fire chaadra. It was great meeting you and you won over everyone on our team with your sense of humor and common love for bhangra and shitting on Jas
