It's finals day

After the celebrations Friday night, we were back at rehearsal late Saturday morning.  First of all, some of the staff went to UD arena to pick up the finalist wristbands and also to support our Dutch friends, Sensation, who had an outstanding run and ended with the bronze medal in the Independent Open class.

We had also received an email from the BBC asking us for an interview and so were met by the CEO of WGI and taken around the back areas of the arena to a private room where we spent about 30 mins being interviewed, explaining about winter guard in the UK, Mayflower's success at WGI and some basics of the history of winter guard and Mayflower (starting out as an all-girl drum corps).  The piece will be broadcast in June on BBC Worldwide (with an audience of 110million!) and will be part of an hour-long feature - so watch this space!

We then headed back to the Sports Centre for rehearsal and we had a large group of supporters including the Railman winterguard (run by ex Mayflower member, Miles).  Rehearsal was relaxed and we focused on a few key areas and our 'big moments'.

Then some downtime at the hotel and food and we left for the arena to unload one last time.  The guard got to watch a few groups before we headed into warm-ups (followed by the Flomarching camera crew).

By day 3 everything is very familiar and this year (unlike 2016, when it snowed), the weather was pleasantly warm so we lined our props up in order of performance (WGI has a very slick method for doing this) and then moved from body to equipment warm-ups and then to the top of the tunnel.

We have been fortunate for semis and finals to have CGT Dallas help us with our tarp, so this made getting on and off the floor much faster.

The crowd was AMAZING at finals and there was a huge cheer for Mayflower as they entered the floor and were announced.  The guard had their best run of the 3 days so you couldn't ask for more, and most of the members felt they had their best performance.

Fortunately, we have sold our tarp and flags so straight after our performance we needed to strip the poles and try and find the bus to load the tarp onto - this was a little like finding a needle in a haystack and after being told exactly where the bus was, and not being able to find it, we heard they had already left!  More frantic comms resulted in the bus coming back and us loading the tarp and getting back to watch the rest of finals.  The crowd was amazing and so were the guards.  The standard this year is truly amazing and seems to get stronger every year.  So we were delighted to end up in the top 15 and continue to be 'part of the big party'.

As ever, retreat was a lot of fun and the after party even more fun (but what happens in Dayton stays in Dayton so I will say no more!),

Tomorrow is a relaxing day of shopping and our last meal together before we start the trek home.