Nykerk Love

If you were wondering about my lack of blog posts in the month of October, I was involved with a massive tradition at my school and didn't have a lot of time. The tradition is called Nykerk and has been around for 79 years. Basically, it's a competition between freshman and sophomore girls by way of song, play, and oration. I was a part of the song category where 124 other girls and I dedicated 13 hours a week to practicing a medley with synchronized hand motions. Our big performance was on Saturday where we were scored by a panel of judges who decide the winner by averaging the scores of all three categories in both grades.

After three weeks of practice, this is what we looked like (watch in HD!):

(The view is better in this video, but the sound quality is better here)

I'm in the front row, fifth from the left.

Not too bad, eh? I actually thought we were pretty good, but that was before I saw the video recording. After watching it a few times, I can totally see why we didn't beat the freshman. We were rushing and barely had any props in comparison. You can see our competition here. (They did a fantastic job. Nykerk Love!)

The whole show is three hours long and song girls like me are judged on smiling the entire. time. I had a coughing fit right after we performed because my mouth was dry from smiling for so long. Plus, we're pretty much packed like sardines on the 40-year-old bleachers. Our running joke was "Get Nykerk comfortable!"

One of the really fun things about being in Nykerk is getting a morale boy. Our practices can be long and tiring so every night we look forward to a goofy skit performed by a group of guys we call "song boys." Their job is to make us laugh and feel special...and buy us candy. Every guy has to morale seven girls each week of the Nykerk season, but the twist is that the girls don't know who is moraling them until the night before the performance. So they hang encouraging posters on our doors, tape candy to them, and sign with their secret signature.

Chuckie Finster, my morale boy, went over the top on the last day. In a pumpkin bucket, he gave me 13 Hershey's chocolate bars, my favorite bag of chips, and a bunch of other candy. This was in addition to the other candy he had already given me with his previous posters. I never thought I'd say this, but I am now sick of Hershey's chocolate. Then, as tradition goes, he showed up at my door on Friday night and presented me with a rose. Nykerk Love is so sweet.