Top Ten Reasons to Get Tickets to the NW Natural Fall Show on October 15

1. Tickets are on sale now at www.idahotickets.com!

2. Reserved seating – the sooner you buy your tickets the better your seats will be

3. Fewer competitors = more freebies for me – oops, I mean you!

4. A stageful of tight glutes…

5. Considering competing in the spring? Come see what to expect!

6. Tickets are on sale now at Select-a-Seat outlets!

7. Smaller show = shorter. Never seen a show? Come get a taste of what it’s all about!

8. Where else is it completely appropriate to compare one person’s butt to another’s?

9. A stageful of six-pack abs…

10. BSU’s game is away that weekend.

The Fall Show is Coming!!!

The Fall Show is coming.

Soon.

It will be on Saturday, October 15 at Borah High School.  Registration is open on the www.ngaidaho.com website, and tickets are on sale now at www.idahotickets.com and Select-a-Seat outlets.

The Fall Show feels like it has sort of snuck up on us.  This is the first time we’ve done a contest in the fall.  For the Spring show, we spend months getting ready.  But for the fall, everything has come down to these last few weeks.

The biggest reason for the delay was truly out of our hands – We didn’t know where the contest would be held until just a few weeks ago.

At the competition last spring, some of the competitors violated the rules of the school where the contest was held.  Because of that, we lost the use of that school, which is a huge bummer, created a lot of work for Bodybuilder Hubby, and was generally a really stupid thing for those particular competitors to do.

(You may notice some changes to the competitor waiver this time around. That particular "issue" will not happen again.)

But after a series of meetings and a lot of waiting for a decision, we got access to the new auditorium at a different high school for the Fall Show.

Actually, I’m kind of looking forward to poking around that particular high school – both Bodybuilder Hubby and I graduated from that school, though we weren’t there at the same time and didn’t meet until years later.

I wonder if the hallways smell the same?

We will be ready.  Today Bodybuilder Hubby purchased 1000 sets of parts to make the competitor number badges.

1000.

If that doesn’t indicate that we’re in this for the long haul, I don’t know what does.

See you at the show!

Website Updates

So, I've been working on the contest website.


It feels like a bit of a luxury to have time to just get things done at my own pace - no big hurry.  But we have been getting questions about the Fall Show, so I'm motivated to work on it anyway.  The Fall Show is a first for us; we'll be running a bodybuilding, figure and bikini contest in October.  It will most likely be considerably smaller than the spring contest, so it could be a great way for competitors - especially first-timers - to get some practice on stage in a situation that's a little less stressful or overwhelming.


And, as Bodybuilder Hubby says, we now know how to run a bodybuilding contest, so why not do it more often?


There will not be a Pro division in the Fall Show, which is the biggest difference.  I've gone through several of the contest webpages already taking out references to the Pro division and making the information accurate.


I'm also updating the images and colors to reflect that the pages are updated for Fall.  I enjoy the design part of things, so I'd planned to update the website to match the poster for each contest once (now twice) a year.  Give me a little free time, a cup of coffee, a good show on Hulu and a blank screen in Photoshop, and I'm a happy girl.  My plan is that the pages like Contest Results and past contest info will keep their images and colors in a sort of visual archive.  Maybe nobody else will really notice, but I will like it.  :)


The location for the Fall Show hasn't been determined.  We had some issues with competitors violating rules at the last venue, which is affecting whether or not we'll be allowed back.  We'll let you all know as soon as we know later this summer.

Changes for Next Year

This afternoon we’ll be sending out a survey to competitors from this year’s contest, something we do every year.

At the contest this year, I heard lots of positive comments and not very many complaints.

But the survey gives competitors a chance to say what they thought and have it be anonymous, so this will be when we hear the most negatives.

Which is fine.

I look forward to getting the feedback while dreading it at the same time.  I will be disappointed to find out if we messed anything up and maybe a little bit hurt by some of the comments.  But I want to know if there were mistakes made so that I can figure out how to prevent similar mistakes next time.  I want to hear what people didn’t like so that we can plan for what needs to change.   I think the contest gets better every year, but it can always be even better.

I started my “List of Things to Do Differently Next Year” while I was still at the contest, sitting at the ticket table.

Just for the record, these things are just my opinion.  I will change the things I have control over, but things about scheduling, judging, etc., aren’t up to me.

Here’s a few of my ideas:

·         Bikini Check-In should be changed to 9:30 or 10am.  There’s no reason for those girls to be there at 7am on Saturday and then have to sit around for 5 hours before they get on stage.

·         There needs to be a way to measure the height of Figure and Bikini competitors prior to the day of the show.  We had several move from one height class to another after being measured at registration, which just complicates the line-up and judging and everything.  I understand that weight fluctuates, but height?  We need an accurate height for each girl earlier in the registration process.

·         We need to start on time.  Enough said.

·         There should be a time limit for how long a group of competitors stand on stage.  Maybe 30 or 40 minutes?  I don’t know of any reason why the judges couldn’t make their decisions within that amount of time.  Of course, I’ve never been a judge, so maybe I’m missing something.  Actually, I think that the entire system of judging needs to change.  More on that later.

·         I need to make signs to let people know about ticket prices and that we can’t take credit cards before they wait in line and then find out they have to go use the ATM across the street.

Oh, and could somebody please help me remember to buy a hand stamp?  Because this was the third year that I forgot, and I’m done writing on people with a Sharpie.

So, what would you change about the contest if you could?

Well, That was Fun!

From my perspective, Bodybuilder Hubby’s contest this weekend was a huge success.

The competitors looked amazing. I didn’t get to see very many of the classes or routines, since my primary job during the contest is to sell tickets, but the ones I saw impressed me.

In particular there was a 15-year-old bodybuilder whose routine got a standing ovation – he was doing back flips and all sorts of things, and had done a fantastic job of choreographing to fit his music.  It was so much fun to watch.  (Though his dad told me later that the competitor had “thrown together” the routine in the days prior to the contest.)  I was so impressed.  I’ll be posting video on the contest website as soon as I get it.

The audience was a lot bigger than I expected.  I thought that having a two-day event would mean fewer people each night, but that wasn’t the case.  Friday night we sold about 2/3 of the seats.  Saturday we came close to selling out, with the closest seats left over being in row X.  It was amazing.  Having a big crowd is important because the audience provides energy and excitement, which makes a huge difference for those onstage and makes for a better show overall.

There was a lot of overlap – people there both days – so it’s hard to know for sure, but I’d guess that we had somewhere between 1,200 and 1,500 people there this weekend.

Amazing.

Generally, people seemed nicer this year, too.  There was a lot less complaining about ticket prices than I’ve heard in years past.  There were fewer rude people.  People were generally happy and smiling, even though for some of them it was a REALLY long day.  For most of us involved it was a really long day.

Bodybuilder Hubby is still asleep.  He got home some time after 2am.  One of the many things he’s responsible for is making sure the facilities are cleaned before he can leave, which includes making sure there are no stains or marks left anywhere from that tanning stuff.  And those of you who compete know how hard it is to clean up that tanning stuff!  I’m sure that most of you are waking up this morning with your skin some mottled shade of orange.

There are definitely things about the contest that I would change or do differently for next year, but for the most part, I’m really happy with how things went.

Congratulations, competitors!  I should have the rankings posted on the contest website later today and the judges score sheets posted by tomorrow.

Pro Men

As I type this (12:30pm on Saturday), the Pro Men’s Bodybuilding class in on stage being judged.

I’m on duty at the ticket table, but I’ve managed to stick my head in the auditorium a couple times.

Those guys look absolutely amazing.

These are the guys Bodybuilder Hubby would normally compete against.  But he’s not onstage today because he’s running the show.  This means he picks the judges, and you can image how it would go over if the guy who picks the judges got on stage…  Gee, I wonder who would win.  (Or how many people would complain if he did win, even if he deserved it…)

But if he were on stage right now, I would be an absolute nervous wreck.  It’s a huge group of guys – 12 Pro Men.   And, looking at that group, I have no idea who will win.  They look amazing.

There’s a guy whose legs look like they are carved out of bronze – just ridiculously good.  But his abs aren’t the best up there.  There’s another guy who has is really ripped, but has sort of smallish calves.  The judges split the group into two, which usually means top half and bottom half, except that one of the guys they put in the group I thought might be bottom half looks really, really good from where I’m standing, so who knows.

There certainly are several who I think could win.  Wow.

Competition - Day 1

I don't know who won yet, but hundreds of other people probably do know by now.

Tonight was the first night of the Bodybuilder Hubby's bodybuilding competition.  Actually there weren't any bodybuilders on stage tonight.  Tonight was all about the Figure girls.

We had five classes for Figure, four based on height and one, the Masters class, for competitors over age 35. 

There were a lot of things that went really well.  The audience turn-out was fantastic, and there was a lot of energy in the room.  The competitors looked amazing!  The judges certainly had their work cut out for them.

There were some glitches that I'm hoping we'll learn from to prevent in the future.  The show started a little late.  I don't know why yet.  I was busy selling tickets and didn't even realize that the show hadn't started on time.  Hopefully whatever the reason for the late start was is something we can plan for and keep from happening next time.

The only other thing that didn't go according to plan was the Figure classes - the groupings based on height.

We spent a lot of time trying to determine how many classes there would be and what the height cut-offs would be.

We looked at all the applicants we had as of last Sunday, five days before the contest.  Ideally, all of the competitors would have registered by then.  Or at least most of them.

We list out everyone by height, and then look for ways to group them so that each class ends up being about the same size.  So the height divisions are different every year depending on how many competitors there are and on their heights.

So this year it made sense to have four groups:
6 people - 5 ft 1 inch and shorter (Class A)
9 people - 5 ft 2 to 5 ft 4 inches (Class B)
8 people - 5 ft 5 inches (Class C)
10 people - 5 ft 6 inches and taller (Class D)

We try not to have more than 10 people in a group because the more people you add, the harder the judging gets and the longer the competitors have to stand on stage.

We thought this would work well, expect then we ended up with several late applicants, most of whom, for some reason, were tall, so Class D got bigger.

Then today at registration, all of the competitors are measured for height, and three of them from Class C were a different height than they had put on their application and had to be moved.  So Class B ended up having twice as many people as Class C, which I'm sure feels really unfair to the competitors, but which we were just sort of stuck with for tonight.

We have, however, already talked about ways to prevent the same thing from happening again at the next contest.

Tomorrow will be a long day: Bodybuilders, Bikini competitors and Pro classes.  74 competitors, I think.  Judging in the morning and awards in the evening.

I left tonight before the awards were announced to take care of some things for tomorrow.  I'm looking forward to hearing how the scores turned out.  

And I'm planning on having the results, including the judges scores, posted on the contest website by Sunday evening.

Good luck, tomorrow's competitors, and Congratulations to today's!