More than just a confidence boost.
 
After waiting for a full month to get the verdict, the Grand Canyon University Club A Cappella group has been tabbed to perform at the prestigious Varsity Vocals International Championship of Collegiate A Cappella Southwest Quarterfinals in late February in Scottsdale. It's the first time in the Lopes' six-year history that they have qualified for the event in only their second attempt at auditioning for it. The ICCA Southwest Quarterfinals will feature 11 teams from Arizona, and the top two finishers of that competition will advance to the ICCA Semifinals, which will also be held in the Phoenix area in late spring.
 
The adrenaline for Lopes' Head Coach Jackie Paul and Lopes' Assistant Coach Savannah Robinson during Wednesday night's GCU Club A Cappella 2022 Fall Showcase at GCU Thunderground was ratcheted up twofold – because they had gotten the word from Varsity Vocals' officials the day before taking the stage but decided to hold off telling the rest of the group until the end of Wednesday's performance, when Paul told both the group and the Thunderground audience at the conclusion of the last song of the night.
 
"We waited to tell them, because we wanted it to be a surprise, so I actually had to lie to them!" said Paul. "They were asking, 'Have you heard? Have you heard?' I had to tell them no so we could tell them at the Showcase."

The expanded group (who's nearly tripled in size from 8 to 21 since this time last year) didn't have much time to get the group in sync for the audition. The group's first practice was in mid-September, and the deadline to submit their ICCA audition was October 15. The Lopes submitted two songs, "Lean on Me" and "So What" (the two songs that led off the Showcase performance on Wednesday), and then sat and waited to get the call. It was only the second time the Lopes have auditioned, having narrowly missed the cut for the quarterfinal round back in the fall of 2019.
 
'We had a pretty good audition video, even though we were still learning how to sing with each other," said Paul. "The ICCA application itself just stated that the audition was just a way for them to 'see your potential', and that 'see your potential' helped the nerves for us. As we've improved, I really hoped we would make it, since we're better now than we were in the video."
 
Now the team has some challenges ahead, since with Fall Break all this week, and GCU's fall semester coming to a close three weeks from now, their rehearsal time will be reduced significantly in relation to the day in Scottsdale on February 25.
 
"We'll probably pick different music for the competition than we had for the audition," said Paul. "In fact, we'll need to pick that new music before we all head off for winter break."
 
They'll also have to pare down the roster for the competition itself, since ICCA dictates that no more than 18 performers can be used per team.
 
"We're going to make a second little group," said Robinson. "So we'll critique more, get a little more strict, and really go at it. It's so doable, though. We started from scratch and I think we'll go far."