Outlet wins Ball State Air Jam for 9th time

Outlet Hip Hop Dance Troupe was once again awarded the annual Air Jam title, making this the ninth time Outlet has been named Air Jam champions. 

Hundreds of students jumped from their seats as they watched the competition, which features Ball State organizations lip-syncing and dancing to popular songs. 

Outlet, an on-campus dance group, performed to songs that went with this year's Homecoming theme, "Cardinals Around the World."

Kira Archer, the vice president of Outlet, performed with the group for the fourth year in a row. 

"It is such a rush. Honestly, it’s the best feeling ever just knowing that all the hard work has just paid off," Archer said. "We’ve been working on this for months now, ever since school started, so it’s a really good feeling for sure."

In addition to overall winner, the group also won the independent category. Archer's mother, Tiffany, drove from Indianapolis to watch her daughter compete with her friends one last time. 

"She’s been dancing since she was three years old so it’s nice to see her in her senior year be able to just finish it out," Tiffany said. "It’s great just to see her dancing, but to know that she won — it’s awesome."

While this year was Archer's fourth time competing, Air Jam welcomed some new contestants in the residence hall category. 

Jordan Kasuboski said residents from Studebaker West decided to join after a residence assistant from DeHority Complex moved and encouraged Studebaker residents to compete, too. 

“At first it was a little rocky because we were all trying to get the hang of things, and once we got on stage, it was the best we’ve ever done," Kasuboski said. "I don’t think anyone was nervous at this point and we were all just ready to get on stage.”

Studebaker West took first runner-up in the residence hall category. While only two teams competed in the residence category, Kasuboski hopes more halls will join Air Jam in the future.

"I hope more residence halls get to do it next year and years to come because it is really fun and it would be fun to have more competition,” she said. 

This year, attendees could vote on their favorite performances by retweeting them off the Homecoming twitter page. The crowd favorite this year went to Alpha Omicron Pi and Sigma Chi. 

While 19 teams battled it out for the title this year, Archer said everyone was very supportive of each other. 

"What I love about Ball State is that everybody cheers for everybody so no matter what group was on stage, everyone was so loud and got us so hype and it was just an awesome feeling," Archer said.

All the winners received trophies and will hold on to the Air Jam title until next year's competition.   

Contact Brynn Mechem with comments at bamechem@bsu.edu or on Twitter at @BrynnMechem.

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