On a chilly March evening, the Hastings High School auditorium filled with music, applause, and a sense of celebration as the school’s show choirs wrapped up their season with a special post-season performance Thursday, March 5.
The event served as both a showcase and a thank you, a final chance for families, friends, and community members to see the competition shows one more time after a busy winter of travel, rehearsals, and awards.
Parents Samantha Endres and Casey Likes opened the night as masters of ceremonies, welcoming the crowd and recognizing the many people who make the program run. They thanked the countless parents and volunteers who helped build sets, sew costumes, support fundraising events like Swingin’ on the River, and lend their time in dozens of other ways throughout the season.
Their message was simple and heartfelt. The show choirs may be on stage, but the program runs on the support of an entire community.
Once the introductions wrapped up, the spotlight shifted to the performers.
Dynamic Edition, Hastings’ all female show choir, kicked off the night with its competitive set. The group delivered a lively performance that mixed strong vocals with crisp choreography and a high level of energy that drew enthusiastic applause from the audience.
The evening concluded with Riverside, the school’s mixed varsity show choir, performing its season show titled “Make Our Garden Grow.” The production blends singing, dancing, and storytelling into a theme centered on growth and transformation.
“This show is called Make Our Garden grow, and it's a show about growth and light and change and blooming where you're planted,” said choir director Luke Warren, who leads the program.
For the students, the performance marked the end of a season filled with long rehearsals and multiple competitions across the region and beyond.
Warren said the group competed four times this season and earned several major awards along the way.
“We've competed four times. We've won. We've won a couple of times. We've gotten caption Awards for Best Choreography a couple times, and best vocals a couple times, best band a couple times,” Warren said. “Lot of really incredible accolades for the kids.”
One of the biggest highlights of the season came during a trip to Nashville, where the group competed against show choirs from across the country.
“We just competed in Nashville,” Warren said.
The trip provided not only a chance to perform but also an opportunity for students to see how show choir varies across the country.
“Nashville is great,” Warren said. “We were first runners up, best choreography, most improved of the day, which was a fun little award, because our daytime to final show was a really huge leap in terms of just a lot of awesome stuff.”
Competitions typically include preliminary rounds followed by finals for qualifying groups, giving performers another chance to refine their performance.
“So, we do a prelim show, and then we if we qualify for finals, then we get to do it again,” Warren said.
Behind the scenes, the scale of the program is significant.
Riverside features 59 singers and dancers, along with 19 band members and eight crew members who manage sets and technical details. Dynamic Edition includes 48 singers and dancers and a 14 member band, with some musicians performing for both groups.
Warren said the level of competition the students face each year is among the best in the country.
“This has been a really, really wonderful season to watch this show come to life,” he said. “This is one of the hardest shows musically and visually that we've probably ever thrown at them.”
The difficulty of the show required time for the students to settle into the material, but Warren said their response was impressive.
“There was, you know, it took some time to settle in, but when it did, like, they accepted the challenge and stood up and, like, really did something with it,” he said.
The experience of traveling and competing nationally also gives students a broader perspective on the activity.
At the Nashville competition, choirs traveled from six states, including Mississippi, Arizona, Missouri, Ohio, and Minnesota.
“They dance like 75 on stage,” Warren said while describing one competing group from Tupelo, Mississippi. “That's a big.”
Even with the competitive atmosphere, Warren said the show choir world is known for its supportive culture.
“Show choirs are really, is a really vibrant community of, like, kids who really just support each other,” he said. “We're competitive, of course, but at the truly, at the end of the day, the kids all support each other and just want to, like, root each other on.”
That sense of community is something the students say they feel strongly as well.
Senior Bella McClellan said the friendships built through the program are one of the most meaningful parts of the experience.
“There's so much to love about it,” McClellan said. “The probably the best part is, like, the very supportive community we have everyone in it is just so lovely and so nice.”
She said the program has allowed students to connect through a shared love of performing.
“I've gotten to make so many great friends and have so many experiences, and especially like to bond over music and like, this is such a fun place to be just singing and dancing on stage together,” McClellan said.
Senior Axton Bauer said traveling for competitions, especially the Nashville trip, stands out as a memorable experience.
The group stayed at a large hotel near the Grand Ole Opry, where multiple show choirs were gathered at the same time.
“That hotel was massive, and there was a bunch of groups there, basically, like a whole tropical adventure in there,” Bauer said.
Meeting students from other regions was just as exciting as performing.
“Getting to know them, get to see different styles of shows, and really just experience like such a variety of show choir,” Bauer said.
He noted that regional styles can vary widely.
“Because Midwest show choir is nowhere near the same as like Southern show choir,” he said.
For some students, performing on stage is also about pursuing personal dreams.
Senior Layla Tuin said singing has always been something she loves deeply.
“I just feel like just so happy,” Tuin said. “I love to sing. It's literally what I dream of doing.”
She hopes to continue pursuing music after graduation.
“I just like everything is just like clouds and rainbows and all that,” she said.
During the show, Tuin performs a duet with Bauer before the rest of the choir joins them on stage, a moment she says brings a rush of support from her fellow performers.
“When whole, the whole group comes out, like, I just feel like such I have such amazing people behind me supporting me,” Tuin said. “It gives you chills.”
For many seniors in the program, this season represents the culmination of several years of growth.
“A lot of us this year are seniors,” McClellan said. “So, it's been really special to watch everyone grow as a group and grow with them.”
She said sharing the final season together has made the experience even more meaningful.
“It's been really special sharing this last season together, and it's felt really rewarding,” she said.
Bauer said the lessons learned in show choir go far beyond singing and dancing.
“Oh, my God, grit,” Bauer said when asked what he will take away from the experience. “Learning to just bear down and do it.”
He said the physical and mental demands of the activity push students to their limits.
“If in this activity, if you're not willing to do it, you're going to drown,” Bauer said.
Looking back on his first year, he remembers how challenging the rehearsals felt.
“I remember my first year, my first choreography week, I was on the ground by the end of rehearsal,” he said.
But he kept coming back, and the experience taught him resilience.
“Really, learning how to bear down and get the job done is something I really learned from this program,” Bauer said.
As the final notes echoed through the auditorium Thursday night, the performance served as both a celebration and a farewell for many of the students on stage.
The lights dimmed, the applause carried through the room, and another season of Hastings show choir came to a close, built on months of dedication, community support, and the shared joy of performing together.