FAHS, South High play host to Fort Showcase

March 23, 2010 • Jenny Garcia  
Filed under Local, News

Over the weekend of February 12 and 13, the music department hosted the 10th annual Fort Showcase Invitational.

The weekend’s schedule began Friday.  A concert choir competition was held in the auditorium.  Also, the middle school show choir competition was held in the auditorium on Friday.  On Saturday, 20 show choirs came from Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, and Wisconsin to compete at Showcase.  There was also a solo competition in the auditorium on Saturday as the show choirs competed.

Many people put in numerous hours of preparation for this event.  Students with study halls helped out throughout the day on the Friday of the competition.  Volunteers started to help set up the gym, prepare concessions and more after school on Friday.

The South High Street Singers and Lexington Singers were assigned multiple tasks to do after school.  These tasks varied from setting up the stage in the gym to helping set up risers in the auditorium to decorating their homerooms.

The set-up for Showcase started early Friday morning and ended late Saturday night.  There were well over 200 people helping out over the busy weekend.

“I really think it is awesome that we get a lot of help from the students and parents.  There is a lot of set up and take down time and it is always good that we have people that support the Fort Show Choirs to help out,” Junior Richele Sanchez said.

This is one of the most important events of the year for the South High Street Singers.  It brings in a lot of money for the V.O.I.C.E.S program.  This is a group of (mainly) parents of the students in choir as well as the parents of graduated students, that support the show choir, as well as the rest of the choral department.

“Without this event, we wouldn’t have the show choir we have today.  Fort Showcase pays for trips, choreography, and sometimes costumes,” Show Choir Director Craig Engstrom said.

Every year there is always the factor of what other competing schools thought of Showcase.  This year, the music department received a lot of positive feedback.

“I love how very friendly everyone is at Showcase and was a well-run event and it was obvious it was planned out very well.  I have always looked forward to competing at Fort Showcase every year because I know a lot of people from the show choirs that have competed there and it is always a blast,” Senior Scott Fischer from Janesville Craig High School, a school that competed  at the Fort Showcase, said.

From meeting new people to watching show choirs perform, the South High Street Singers seem enthusiastic to host Showcase.

“I like being able to watch lots of good show choirs.  Being a girl at a show choir competition, you get to the school and start curling your hair right away, which can take a long time.  This prevents you from watching a lot of shows.  We didn’t perform until after finals at Fort Showcase, so we have the entire time to watch as many shows as we want!” Junior Mariah Topel said.

Mundelein High School consists of three competing show choirs: Sound FX (an all male group), Lights (an all female group), and Sound (a mixed gender group).

Sound FX and Lights were in the prep group division while Sound competed in the varsity division.  Sound ended up being the grand champions of Fort Showcase.  Mundelein Sound were Grand Champions last year as well.

“It felt amazing to win! We went from second place to first place, and being able to do that was such an accomplishment for me. It felt great to know all our hard work had finally been paid off,” Sophmore from Mundelein High School Caitlin Cappuccilli said.

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