News and Updates Nov. 5th 2012

 Welcome to week 3!  Competitions are less than two weeks away for those early conference meets and invites - we'll be reporting results and getting the competitions underway very soon.  Can't wait to see what everyone is up to!  Today's updates are about the miss dance team MN competition and some MSHSL goings on are at the bottom of the page -- check out the results release below.  Congratulations to all the winners!  

Back on October 28, over 50 dancers from across Minnesota came together to represent their schools at the 11^th annual Miss Dance Team Minnesota competition. The event was held at Eastview High School in Apple Valley and was run by Director, Jenny Raiche.

The Miss Dance Team MN competition is an opportunity for dancers to represent their teams as a soloist. Dancers in the “Miss” division are seniors or junior leaders on their teams. There was also a best of Minnesota category in 9^th, 10^th and 11^th grade. Winners then qualify for the national Miss Dance Drill Team USA competition in Orange County, California. The national competition is in it’s 61^th year of existence, and Minnesota dancers have placed amongst the best in the nation for the past 10 years!

22 dancers competed this year for the title of Miss Dance Team MN. Coming in 6^th place was awarded to Paige Anderson from Edina. 5^th place is Katie Segner from Benilde-St. Margaret’s. 4^th place went to Brainerd Kixter, Grace Gilbertson. The top three went: 2^nd runner-up – Anna Jergensen from Maple Grove, 1^st runner-up – Mikayla Larson from Eastview and finally our 2012 Miss Dance Team Minnesota is Madeline Honke from Wayzata. These dancers along with other names to Team Minnesota will have the opportunity to travel to California in March to represent Minnesota at the nationals.

Additional results from this year’s Miss Dance Team Minnesota competition were as follows.

9^th “Best of MN” division

1^st place: Molly Campbell, Eastview

2^nd place: Morgan Bragg, Eastview

10^th grade “Best of MN” division

1^st place: Alli Getz, Rogers

2^nd place: Mikayla DeNicola, Eastview

3^rd place: Ava Woyno, Maple Grove

11^th grade “Best of MN” division

1^st place: Olivia Corcoran, Eastview

2^nd place: Karissa Bolton, Blaine

3^rd place: Jacqueline Beiter, Benilde-St. Margaret’s

Updates on MSHSL happenings:  For those of you who follow other MSHSL sports, you may have noticed the new format for section tournaments in 6A football this year.  Those teams heading to state have been chosen, but this will be something dance team's should keep an eye on as a possible set up for section tournaments in our future, as the "section finals" idea did not get out of region meetings after all was said and done for dance team.  

This is the first real deviation from a strictly geographical assignment that I've seen done by the league, and boy were the first year results interesting!  The 32 largest football schools (by enrollment) were placed into 4 sections, where they played one head-to-head game, winner advancing to the "crossover" section game.  Then the winning teams from the geographical section faced the winners of another geographical section to determine who would earn a berth at state.  Interestingly, all the state berth winners this year were from the south and west metro sections.  Not one team from the north or east metro advanced this year.   While this is only my opinion, I feel dance team is also somewhat (not always) stacked in this geographical way, where we get a geographical (and league preferred) representation at state, but not a "tournament of champions" where only the best qualify.  It will be interesting to see how this format holds up to the inevitable complaints and scrutiny by the north and east metro winners who didn't send a single team to state.  Will they feel a bit left behind by this new format?  Is it really "fair"?  Doesn't this just show how unbalanced our current system is for all sports when it ends up this lopsided?  (I think it exposes a lot) What direction are we really going in - geography or best of the best?  Keep an eye on this conversation and see how much this guides the future of league tournaments...should be interesting! 

WOW Factor Sports Target Center Invitational Date Change!

Due to a double booking at the Target Center, the WOW Factor Sports MSHSL portion of their invitational has change dates to Saturday, January 26th.