Pirouettes dance team home SUCCESS!!! (VIDEOS!)

We still have a fair level of activity remaining this week, and it has already been a jam-packed and exciting week. Tonight just raised that to another level! This was a truly very special night to be a part of with our B-B-E/Paynesville Pirouettes dance team. So much to talk about! Let's get into it.

The Pirouettes dance team hosted a six-team meet tonight at the elementary school. We had a near-packed house, and it was awesome!! A seventh team, Lac qui Parle Valley/Dawson-Boyd, was unable to make the trip due to poor road conditions out west.

Teams performing tonight were:
B-B-E/Paynesville Pirouettes
New London-Spicer Blackcats
Canby-Minneota
Sauk Centre
Atwater-Cosmos-Grove City Sensations
Minnewaska Area

*Here's the varsity jazz team in action tonight performing to the song "Bird Set Free":


With the exception of the two members from Paynesville, I know all 11 B-B-E student-athletes on our Pirouettes dance team very well. They are such wonderful, hard-working kids who are extraordinarily kind and polite. If you don't know these student-athletes, you are missing out. They are very, very proud of their dance program and are quite dedicated to both self-improvement and team improvement! Led by B-B-E Class of 2015 graduate and head coach Katie Boie, the Pirouettes went through what was a not-so-easy transition in mid-December to split up their 13-person roster into varsity and JV squads. This created an extra layer of work and especially teamwork to pull off. Tonight those efforts paid off with the JV jazz squad earning a first-place trophy with a hard-fought win over New London-Spicer. They were so thrilled to earn this success! I am extremely honored to have a front row seat to all of this. That is a recurring theme to this 2022-2023 school year. And I absolutely LOVE it.

It is the hope of every member of the team and the coaching staff that this season can be a springboard to getting more student-athletes to join them for the 2023-2024 season. The future is bright for this sports program!

*Below is video of the exciting awards ceremony. This was such a joy to be a part of. Their reaction brought tears to my eyes:


The JV Jazz squad earned a ranking points total of 3.5.

AND I can FINALLY announce this after a month of trial-and-error and complete anguish after initially struggling to get a brand new and very expensive camera off the ground and up and running. I purchased a very expensive camera before Christmas and have trial-and-error'd different lenses on it. I am THRILLED to say that tonight's dance comp was the very first sports event that this camera started sizzling at!! I am still learning on it, but the camera really popped. I got some truly outstanding shots. It has taken almost a year of plannign and researching and saving money to pull this off!! I had been limping along from February last winter all the way through the end of 2022 with just one large digital camera. It is a very old model that has seen its better days...although I'm proud to say that it pulled off some amazing photography for me last fall with the high school musical. I am excited for what will be this new camera's second event at the Kimball high school tomorrow night!!! If you know me and my newspaper, you know that photography is very, very important to me...and it's the lifeblood of The Voice that allows me to make money and keep this operation afloat!!

More to come, including a result from the boys' basketball game at Royalton. **Also if anyone is reading this with interest in girls' basketball...the Friday night game for our Jaguars is AT Kimball. Some websites are listing this game incorrectly. Kimball has already visited our gym!! They will HOST our Jaguars tomorrow night in a big conference battle!

UPDATE from Royalton: the B-B-E Jaguars boys' basketball team defeated the Royals 64-42. They have now won six straight games! A total of 9 Jaguars found the scoring column, and the Jaguars led 32-11 at halftime. NEXT: the Jaguars (8-2) travel to Ashby tomorrow night (Friday) for a Section 6A match up with the Arrows.

Final and parting addition to this blog post before calling it a day...here's a link to the Bonanza Valley Voice newspaper website where you can watch part of the Central Minnesota Band Association middle school honors band concert. This was held on Saturday, January 14 at Elk River high school. Two members of B-B-E's middle school band participated in this awesome 'band camp" style day!! Thank you again to Mr. Biehn for lining this up!! Link: https://bit.ly/3whLUQc.

Central MN Conference boys' basketball scores on January 19:
Eden Valley-Watkins 76, Holdingford 46
Atwater-Cosmos-Grove City 70, Kimball Area 47
Paynesville Area 95, Maple Lake 23

Area boys' basketball scores on January 19:
Dassel-Cokato 65, New London-Spicer 60
Central MN Christian 77, Canby 74
K-M-S 56, Minneota 43
Mountain Iron-Buhl 65, Cherry 72
Henning 89, Bertha-Hewitt 39
West Central Area 56, Sauk Centre 50
T-M-B 64, MACCRAY 61
Barnesville 79, Minnewaska Area 38
Border West 80, Rothsay 44
Battle Lake 62, Hillcrest Lutheran Academy 60
Nevis 65, Cass Lake-Bena 58 (CL-B's first loss of the year after an 11-0 start)
Cromwell-Wright 53, Braham 42
Hancock 72, Brandon-Evansville 66
Parkers Prairie 64, Ashby 38
Pierz 65, Upsala 49

Area girls' basketball scores on January 19:
Maple Lake 46, Howard Lake-Waverly-Winsted 33
Benson 42, Heron Lake-Okabena/Fulda 38
Royalton 59, Eden Valley-Watkins 55 (Central MN Conference game held at Eden Valley)
Parkers Prairie 51, LP-GE 16
Browerville 51, Swanville 38
Osakis 53, Upsala 43
Braham 66, East Central 27
Sauk Centre 60, Melrose Area 28
Menahga 58, Pine River-Backus 40