South to Northville

Heading in to the mall, where we met up with the Johnsons.

Welcome back, folks.

This weekend we had another pom event on our calendar, but this one was a bit larger in scale than, say, your usual performance-at-half time during a football or basketball game.  This time, it was Regionals.  Held down by Novi, at Northville High School - surrounded by mansions and subdivisions that make someone from upper-crust Midland feel, well, like a pauper.  The event was scheduled to take place at 9am on Sunday morning, and so us and the Johnsons drove downstate the day before and checked into a local Holiday Inn Express in order to make sure we were there on time.

On the way down, we stopped off at Great Lakes Crossing - a gigantor mall located. . . I don't know, somewhere down there.  I don't know the southeastern part of the state all that well, so I always assume anything south of Flint and west of Ann Arbor is just 'Detroit.'  We toured the mall a lot longer than we had anticipated, but it was a pretty good time - definitely planning on making it a day trip sometime soon in the near future.

Anyway, I'll leave you with some pictures and video of our overnight venture downstate, culminating in Northeast's somewhat lackluster performance at Regionals (I'll go into detail with that here in a little bit.)

Enjoy. . .

When we first arrived at the mall, we made a beeline for the food court, where the Johnson family was wrapping up lunch (we had eaten before hitting the road.)

First store we went in to was god-awful Hot Topic, which Abby and Ella insisted on checking out.  I snapped a couple pics to text to Alayna, who had to stay back at Grandma's house this weekend because, due to Covid restrictions, each pom team member could only bring two family members to Regionals.

Loungefly backpacks (like the kind they license at Disney World - all the rage with middle school girls these days.

Trying out shoes at the Vans outlet.

While waiting for the womenfolk to shop in a T.J. Maxx or Marshall's (I forget which, they're identical to one another and we were forced to stop into both throughout the course of the afternoon) I spotted this InstantPot that's definitely waaaay cooler than the one we have in our house.  Kris wasn't having it.

A couple pommers, loaded up on sugar mid-way through the mall.

100%.

Clothes shopping in yet another store.  These ladies dragged poor Erik and I all over hell this afternoon, it was a trial in patience for sure.

On our way back out of the mall, we came back to Bass Pro Shop (a.k.a. Cabela's), which is a giant version of Jay's Sporting Goods, more or less.  They have a lot of ol' timey decor spread out throughout the store, it's fun to walk around and scope out weird shit.

This shit looks like a shrine.

Abby and Ella, scoping out some live fish.

BFFs.

We checked in to our room at the Holiday Inn Express around 6:30pm, and found that both us and the Johnsons had rooms on the first floor (thank God.)  Our room happened to be at the far end of the hall, so we were lucky enough to get a slightly larger room - identical to the Johnsons' but about 3 feet wider.  Maybe to accommodate, like, a wheelchair or something?  I don't know.

Room was super clean and updated - always nice to check in to a place and have it in pristine condition.

Kris recognized the complimentary shampoo, conditioner and body wash - I guess it's some hoity-toity brand that you can buy at Marshall's or whatever, she was pretty excited about it.  I always bring my own shit so I didn't really care either way.

Abby got her own bed this time around, didn't have to share a bed with her sister this weekend.

You can spot the mini-fridge there to the left - I always like being able to store beers and waters in a mini-fridge opposed to the cooler I usually lug about.

We had originally planned on going out to eat that night - something we're all big fans of - but since it was already pushing 7pm and there were hour-long waits at all the nicer restaurants in the area (thanks again, Covid), we opted to order delivery instead.  Kris and Courtney spent a loooooooong time picking out food items down in the Johnsons' room, much to me and Erik's dismay.

Kris brought along her own bottle of bathroom spray for our room.  You know, for poops.

Erik and I drank a few beers and watched The Simpsons in my room while Kris and Courtney took the girls down to the pool for some swimming.  About a dozen other girls from Northeast's pom team happened to be staying in the same hotel - the parents had planned all this together in order to make things easier - and they all met down there at the pool.  Afterwards, girls were running up and down the halls banging on each other's hotel room doors, so Abby and Ella were in and out of various rooms for a couple hours.

Food arrived about 45 minutes later - we ordered a small pepperoni pizza for the girls, along with some super-awesome breadsticks. . .

. . . some fried wings, which were better than expected. . . 

. . . and this large, supreme pizza.  Gorged ourselves stupid, rest assured - everyone was starving by the time we got around to actually eating.

Watching TV and wrapping up dinner.  Johnsons returned to their room around 9pm, and Abby took a shower.  Kris and Abby went to bed around 10pm, but not before Yours Truly had to make two separate phone calls down to the front desk because the people above us were pumping some bass past quiet hours.  After the first call, nothing changed.  After the second, the music was turned down a little, but was still loud enough to drown out our quieted TV.  Eventually Kris got so fed up with it that she marched down the hall to the desk and complained in person.  That got 'em to shut up.  I stayed up til 11pm or so and screwed around on my laptop before finally falling asleep.

The next morning, the entire pom team had to meet down in the coach's room at 6:45am with the moms to start doing hair and make-up.  Breakfast opened up at 7am and soon the entire squad, and their parents, were huddled together in the dining area, gorging on food and coffee and psyching themselves up for the big even.t

We got to Northville High School around 8am in order to check the girls in with the pom association, and so that they could do a quick dress rehearsal before the event kicked off at 9am.  While we waited, Erik and I picked up some flowers for our girls and entered into a 50/50 raffle (which, sadly, neither of us won.)  This high school was beyond huge - the inside resembled an airport more than an actual high school.  You can tell the surrounding town has some serious money, it was beyond anything I had ever seen in a high school before.

The Northeast Pom Team (Abby is in the second row, third from right, wearing a mask.)

They ran five teams at a time, meaning five pom teams would do a routine, then the judges would tally their scores and determine which squads would move on to state competitions.  Following this, the crowds and teams would file out of the gym and another five teams - and their corresponding audience - would file in and the process would repeat itself.  There were some pretty hardcore teams in attendance, some of them private teams with their own buses and top-notch gear.  Our Northeast girls were definitely out of their depth, and came across like the Bad News Bears - country bumpkins competing against big-league, Detroit schools.

After each team competed, they took a seat in the bleachers opposite of the audience (you can see a few teams sitting in the bleachers in the previous picture.)  Unfortunately, our girls went on last, meaning they had to perform in front of four other schools, who were all waaaaay better than our team.  Abby (shown here, in her cohort that started off on the right flank of the team) and Ella both performed well, but they - and most of the girls on the team - practice hard and take pom seriously.  Unfortunately, pom at Northeast isn't a 'cut' sport, meaning there are no try-outs for the team (unlike at my school, where pom is a serious thing and the team is incredible):  anyone can join Northeast's team and perform, meaning there are lots of untalented kids on the squad, as well as kids on the squad who don't want to be there but their parents force them to compete.  This means that they don't practice, don't take it seriously, and, consequently, this really showed in today's competition.

Not a bad performance, but you can tell there are kids who aren't giving it their all.  After their routine, the judges announced that the other four teams would be moving on to division state competitions - only ours didn't qualify for state competition.  Most of the girls in the Northeast team were in tears when we picked them up, and Abby and Ella were crushed.  On the way back up to Midland, us and the Johnsons stopped off at Birch Run to treat the girls to lunch (at Bagger Dave's) as well as some clothes shopping at the Birch Run Outlets to spoil them a bit - it was the least we could do to improve their spirits after the shit-show that was Regionals.  Next weekend they compete in Saginaw for yet another Regionals, so we're crossing our fingers that this time around, things don't go as bad.

- Brian