AVA at ICCA Quarterfinals 2011

So Ani V'Ata competed at the International Championship for Collegiate A Cappella Northeastern Quarterfinals for 2011 (whew, that's a mouthful)! And what an event it was! The competition was high, with the other a cappella groups performing extraordinarily well, most notably the Nor'easters from Northeastern University and the Starving Artists from Brandeis University. Also at the competition was our good friends, Tizmoret from Queens College.

When we were going into the competition, we weren't really expecting to do all that well. I mean, we knew we were/are hot stuff, but what are the odds we would do well? The order of performances for these competitions is selected randomly by picking a number out of a hat, and we came up last. We were the closing performance! While we were less than pleased with this twist of events at first, we soon realized that it played to our advantage because being last allowed us to be freshest in the minds of the judges. We sang our songs, kicking butt the way we do, and when the judges left after our performance to talk about the winners, the emcee proposed a beatbox battle. I ran on stage. Unfortunately, we do not have any footage of this epic event, but let's just say I had a lot of fun.

When the judges came back, they had everyone from every group come on the stage. First they handed out some awards. I did not get the Vocal Percussion award, but the judges didn't see the beatbox battle, so it's their own loss. As our group is standing together awaiting our impending doom, we heard the judge announce the award for best soloist, "Melanie Herrera of Ani V'Ata!" we went crazy! Someone from our group got an award of that magnitude! Then they started announcing the group winners. When the Starving Artists won third place, we hung our heads, because we were expecting that to be the best we would get. But then they announced us as the 2nd place winners who would be going on to the semifinals along with the 1st place winners! Our group went ballistic! We jumped up and down, the euphoria of the event not really hitting us yet. You can imagine, we are all still riding on a cloud at the moment. It was a great night.