Snowstruck: Reflecting on cancellation of Waukee Starstruck

As January comes to an end, many students are thinking back on the weather this month. During the week of January 8th – 12th Waukee got many feet of snow and the temperatures dropped below freezing. Because of that Waukee High School had to cancel school on Tuesday the 9th and Friday the 12th. This gave many students a relaxing snow day, but not show choir kids. Every year Waukee High School hosts a show choir competition called StarStruck. This competition usually falls on the weekend of the 11th, 12th, and 13th, so StarStruck was canceled this year because of many factors. StarStruck is a very looked-forward-to event, so many show choir students are left wondering what happened to StarStruck this year and why.

StarStruck has three different days and they all consist of different types of groups. On Thursday we host something called parade of show choirs where all of the show choir’s going to Waukee High School perform. The performance starts with the 7th graders in Spark and throughout the night we make our way through to our varsity group Millennium. Before those performances, our prep and varsity group performed for Waukee’s 5th and 6th graders. Next is Friday, our second day of StarStruck. This is our day for middle school groups to perform including our own 8th and 9th-grade groups. On this day we also host our jazz choirs. The last day of StarStruck is Saturday. This day is for the high school show choir also including our own prep and varsity group. 

Because the weather was behaving throughout the week, StarStruck preparations were carried out throughout the week including building the stage which is a very long task. But because things continued normally Waukee was able to host a parade of show choirs and our 5th and 6th grader performance. This is a super fun day because we start out performing to inspire these young students to join the show choir when they are old enough. And then at night the parade of show choirs is an auditorium filled with all the parents and show choir kids in Waukee so it is a very exciting experience to be able to perform for them and the crowd does a fantastic job of getting the other show choirs excited! So even though the rest of the StarStruck days got canceled, Waukee is so lucky that we got to have such an amazing day of StarStruck on Thursday. 

Because the district had to cancel school on Friday, our middle school and jazz choir day was canceled. But at that time we were still planning on hosting show choirs and jazz choirs on Saturday. There were many changes to the schedule during this time. Directors had to try to find time to fit jazz choirs and all of the competing show choirs at a time. At this time they also decided to not include finals in our event. Finals are when selected groups perform a second time to get in front of the judges one more time. So by excluding this from our event at this time, students would have been able to leave Waukee High School much earlier than a regular show choir competition. 

Also during this time, many competing schools dropped out of our competition because of the weather. Many schools were traveling a long way so having people travel to Waukee High School in that bad of weather wasn’t a smart decision. But during this time many schools were also added. Lots of local schools were planning on going to competitions farther away but since Waukee isn’t too far from where these schools were coming from lots of directors tried to be added on to StarStruck last minute in an attempt to still be able to compete just not at their planned competition. 

A quote from Mr. Knutson Waukee varsity show choir director perfectly encapsulates this stressful time. “About every school in the Des Moines area called me to see if they could be on the waiting list. At various times, several schools weren’t on the roster who wanted to attend, and some ended up canceling before I could post new schedules. Friday was incredibly complicated, and I tried to essentially redo a process that takes me a long time to do multiple times throughout that day (building jazz and show schedules that didn’t conflict, assigning volunteer shifts, calling backup judges, etc.).” 

Many schools look forward to competitions all year so it is understandable why so many schools were trying to still compete despite the weather. Even though there were many efforts from both directors and the district, Saturday was ultimately canceled. The reason for this was that so many schools decided at the last minute to drop out of our competition because of safety concerns due to the weather. Many directors also had to listen to what their district was telling them to do, and also since it was a closer competition many students would be traveling to Waukee individually which is an even bigger safety concern.  

Even though this is such a big loss, this is not the first year that we have had to cancel due to weather so officials have many ways of dealing with a situation like this. But with such a hard-to-swallow decision many show choir students were left thinking who made this decision: our directors or our district. Waukee High School Principal Cary Justmann provides some knowledge on the question. “Any decision of this magnitude is made with several different people providing input. One of the major factors with this year’s cancellation was that other schools had canceled all school activities for that weekend, so they “pulled out” of our show”

 On the other side of this, Mr. Knutson’s comments on handling StarStruck cancellations happen. “Every year is different. Sometimes, we know as a district that we’ll need to cancel the event beforehand. This year, our district did everything possible to host the event, but the weather forced enough cancellations that we no longer could host the contest. When the blizzard continued to be worse than we initially thought it would be, it became clear that it wasn’t in the best interest of our community or the visiting schools to host the contest.” So even though Waukee worked very hard to still keep this competition going it was ultimately in everyone’s best interest that it got canceled so that they could stay safe and warm. 

StarStruck is many people’s favorite part of show choir. StarStruck gives so many people from around the state of Iowa a chance to perform which is the biggest part of show choir. Many groups including Waukee only get to perform their show a certain amount of times so losing one of those opportunities is very devastating. Not to mention this affects the Waukee Vocal Music Department tremendously. Many students signed up to work at StarStruck including many fun jobs like hosting show choirs but they had to lose their jobs. And many people also set up the stage which took hours all for essentially nothing. 

Principal Cary Justmann comments on how losing this event affected Waukee’s morale. “The show brings a ton of joy to our school, so that will be hard to replace. We love showing off our school and our overall show.” For some students and teachers, this was their last Starstruck which can be very sad considering that every Waukee student has performed at StarStruck if they are in show choir. And so many people have looked forward to their last StarStruck since they joined the show choir. Senior Sydney Berger shares what she missed most about not having StarStruck as a senior. “I missed hosting and all of the fun memories I would have made with my friends! But I’ll always remember the Millennium girl’s sleepover we had in honor of StarStruck!” 

Another Senior who is reflecting on StarStruck is Kiera Lacey, here she shares why StarStruck is so important and why it is so missed. “I missed being able to spend a whole day with my friends hosting groups. You get to feel like part of something really big and take on a leadership role. I also miss getting to see all of the show choirs that usually come, it’s usually one of the chances I get to see what show each choir is doing that year.” It is easy to see why StarStruck is such an exciting event and why many students are sad it didn’t get to happen this year. 

Even though losing StarStruck was a very sad thing there were also some amazing parts about it. Like the Parade of Show Choirs and the fact that 75+ people came to school during the blizzard to take down the stage and get everything set up for school. So even without the event, there are still examples of how StarStruck brings the Waukee community together. And the show choir season is not finished yet! Waukee’s varsity and prep group still have 3 more competitions and opportunities to share with our family throughout the state of Iowa and continue to share our important messages despite whatever hurdles are thrown at us.