Behind The Scenes of Tiger Clash 2025

The tense feeling the night before a competition is one of the best yet most dreadful when you’re finally met with the beginning of the show choir season. You and your fellow choirmates and band friends are grouped around metal trusts and heavy boxes worth thousands of dollars in sound equipment. Directors are scurrying, trying to gather costume bags and get everyone in order. Students are piled into the main lobby organizing signs and tables, just waiting to lock the main doors before the long morning of the competition dawns on the Hastings choir students. Every year, it feels like it only gets more stressful for the Hastings choir students setting up, but the feeling of relief you get once you walk in at six in the morning is one of the most reassuring feelings ever.

Every year, people from all over the state, and sometimes all over the country, travel to Hastings, Nebraska to witness one of the largest events ever hosted in town, inviting in over 2,000 people a year.

Tiger Clash, an annual show choir competition, has been a renowned success for four years, yet every year it finds new ways to prove its popularity to the public. High school and middle school division prep and varsity show choirs alike travel from all over the Midwest (Arkansas City High School, Gretna East, Millard South, et cetera) to compete in the annual show choir competition, begin at eight in the morning with some groups not leaving until past midnight. 

There are always so many things to prepare for as the weekend approaches. For students and directors, though, it is months worth of planning, buying, and setting up.

“We plan for Tiger Clash year round,” said choir director Christian Yost. “[So] everything is kind of a moving thing… As soon as the bell rings at 3:30, we do things… like all of the furniture on the bridge, we take it, put that away so it’s safe… We have to hang up signs everywhere, start preparing bus parking, [and] block off parking spots.”

This year, the middle school competition was planned to be hosted on the night of Friday, January 24, 2025. In previous years, the junior competitions were hosted early Saturday morning before senior division groups performed. 

“It was fun to see the development of the program from what it was when I was there,” said freshman show choir student Emma Leonard. “I’m expecting a more traditional prep group-esque performance, like dresses and heels like when we [Hastings Middle School] did it last year.”

Tiger Clash is such a largely anticipated event by the city, competing schools, and volunteering and paid staff solely because of its mass attendance. Every year, the auditorium of Hastings High School cycles seas of people all throughout the day while performances go in and out.

“Tiger Clash over the last six years has continued to grow, and we are just getting bigger, and bigger, and bigger. [So to be great], we’re expecting about 3,500 people to come, so it’s going to be all hands on deck, and parking will be a mad mess,” Yost said. “There’s 19 high school groups and there are five middle school groups. There’s four girls groups, five prep groups, and then varsity groups.”

In the mess of it all, the students and directors are feeling the nerves finally starting to hit them as the competition date inched towards them.

“This is something that you have to take seriously, [and] Yost talks about this a lot,” said freshman show choir student Daemyn Broxterman. “It’s the adrenaline that kicks in your brain when you have a competition at your school or your home, that no matter the outcome, you’re just going to feel good because you finally get to perform in front of all of these people that you know.”

With so much to do in the days, weeks, months before the event is even close to beginning, it’s a stressful atmosphere to be in. But when groups start flooding in the main doors, and the first group walks on stage, it can only get more tense, is what you’d think.

“Now, the most relieving thing is, when the first group gets on stage [on] Saturday morning and performs, because you’re like ‘Well, the rest of it’s downhill from there,’” Yost said with a nervous smile. “If it’s going to go bad, it’s going to go bad, but there’s no changing it now, right?”

In spite of all of the stress build-up and panicking during this time in the competition season, there’s nothing to be more grateful for than to have an event like this in the community. 

“Tiger Clash is, in the words of our superintendent, one of the greatest school events he’s ever been to, because there’s no alcohol, there’s no drugs, there’s nothing crazy going on,” Yost said. “And then, at the same time, you have parents, students, siblings, all able to participate in the event together, and all get something out of the event.”