Gamma Phi Beta, Phi Sigma Kappa win annual IU Sing

Ten minutes before Gamma Phi Beta and Phi Sigma Kappa’s act, “Fascinatin’ Rhythm,” was set to take the stage at the 75th annual IU Sing, sophomore and song leader Courtney Staples was in a car accident.\n“I thought I was going to miss the show,” Staples said.\nStaples escaped the accident without injury. And with the help of her mother, who was in town for the show, made it to the IU Auditorium on time.\nStaples’ worries about her car accident were soon overshadowed by feelings of joy when she was awarded a $250 scholarship from the IU Student Foundation and the act she helped bring together, “Fascinatin’ Rhythm,” was awarded the first-place overall trophy at the 2007 IU Sing.\n“My night has been so up and down,” Staples said. “I don’t even care about my car anymore.”\nThe act “Fascinatin’ Rhythm” also received the first-place Division B trophy. Acts were awarded first through fifth place in two divisions. Division A included acts of 73 members or more, and Division B included acts of 72 members or fewer. The Division A winners were Chi Omega and Phi Kappa Sigma with “A Night at the Movies.” Alpha Phi and Chi Phi won second place in Division A and Alpha Gamma Delta and Alpha Epsilon Pi won second place in Division B.\n“Fascinatin’ Rhythm” song leader Alex Kreisman, a sophomore, said the win was unbelievable.\n“I had no idea,” Kreisman said. “I didn’t see this one coming.”\nAll the acts in this year’s show chose a theme from a previous year of IU Sing. “Fascinatin’ Rhythm” was from 1987 and focused on the Bobby Knight era of IU men’s basketball at Assembly Hall, according to the 2007 IU Sing program. Members of the act portrayed basketball players who began skipping practice to hang out with cheerleaders portrayed by other members of the act. The audience laughed after a member of the act who was portraying Knight, the former head basketball coach, said, “They’ll never fire me.”\nInitially, the group didn’t know what to do with the theme of “Fascinatin’ Rhythm,” sophomore song leader John Cornell said in an e-mail interview.\n“The first thing we thought of was the dance that used basketballs for rhythm, and it went on from there,” Cornell said.\nJudge Janis Cooper Parker, an IU School of Music alumna, said the act’s use of the rhythm from bouncing basketballs on the stage with the song was clever. Parker said this was the 30th anniversary of her involvement with IU Sing, which began when she participated in the show as a student.\n“Having a long history with the program, it does my heart proud to see such a long tradition celebrated so well by these acts,” Parker said.\nJudge and IU alumna Mia Hirschel said everyone did a great job, but offered one suggestion for the future of IU Sing.\n“I’d like to see more dormitories involved, because this is a campus-wide competition,” Hirschel said.\nHirschel said the last time she saw IU Sing, in 1984, there were 32 acts involved. This year there were 21.\nPatti Frazin of Deerfield, Ill., was in the audience to support her daughter, sophomore Rebecca Frazin who was a song leader for Sigma Delta Tau and Sigma Chi’s act “Magic To Do.” Frazin said that she thought the show was great and that she knew it took a lot of time and energy to put together.\n“I knew how hard it was for the song leaders to bring so many kids together and get them to listen,” Frazin said. “It was great to see what my daughter has been working on for the last several months.”