The Greene County High School Jazz Choir is off and running for its season.

Director David Heupel says Ram Jive are coming off a Division I-Rating from the Iowa High School Music Association State Festival that was held a couple of weeks ago, where he believes the students performed really well.

“And the format they use is really nice. The judges are able to clinic us for a little bit afterwards and we had a nice clinic afterwards and got some good scores as well. So, it was a good trip for that.”

Heupel points out that they are submitting their recording for consideration for the Iowa Vocal Jazz Championships, which they are hosting this year. Then, tomorrow, Heupel explains the ensemble heads to North Polk High School for a competition. His goal is to have the students continue to progress and get better, even though it is a competition against other schools.

“I’m not a big competition fan because I know in the show choir world a little bit, what I remember from it, you could go to competition and get third place and be really happy about it and then next weekend perform even better, but because of who’s there and how it works out you end up in eighth place, and then the kids are bummed. And so I really try to focus on, ‘That was better than last time.’ So placing isn’t that big of a deal.”

Additionally, Heupel adds that next week, they are traveling to Spirit Lake for one of the final competitions of the year.