Flexibility and chicken dancing will be judged

10:18 AM CST on Thursday, January 12, 2006

Brave Combo has played outdoor festivals, wedding receptions and dates with the Denton Community Chorus.

On Sunday, the two-time Grammy-winning polka band will play in perhaps its most unusual venue yet: Kitty Magee Arena.

The point: to rev up the crowd for the opening meet for the Texas Woman’s University gymnastics team.

Head gymnastics coach Frank Kudlac said the team started pepping up its meets last year, when it invited the University of North Texas drumline to play a pre-meet concert, and then play during the women’s warm-ups.

“Usually, we play music before the meets, aggressive music that’s meant to get the crowd and the gymnasts pumped up,” Kudlac said.

Then he saw an opportunity.

“College gymnastics is a lot different than a lot of people think,” he said. “Bigger schools, like Georgia, get really big crowds out for meets, and I’m talking about 10,000 to 12,000 people.”

Kudlac said the TWU team has been drawing more fans lately, but he’d like attendance at the meets to break the 1,000-person mark — per meet. Kudlac said the opportunity for live music preceding the match, plus live music during the three-minute warm-ups, was ripe.

The athletics department talked about it and settled on Brave Combo, the Denton band that gets multitudes of folks dancing like mad to Christmas carols, and just about everything else the band plays.

“I think it’s a great situation where Brave Combo has really great fans who might be hooked once they see a meet. That’s what people tell me all the time, that they came to one meet and were hooked,” he said.

He said he suspects there are faithful TWU gymnastics fans who might get hooked on Brave Combo, too. The band will sell merchandise in the hall, and judges will give the best “Chicken Dance” dancers a free sandwich.

Brave Combo is known for its burning rendition of the ridiculous group dance.

“We’ll keep doing that contest throughout the season, though we’ll use a recording after this first meet,” Kudlac said.

The uninitiated might find a gymnastics meet a little frenzied, as its four events — floor exercises, balance beam, vault and uneven parallel bars — are simultaneous.

—Lucinda Breeding

GYMNASTICS MEET

What: Texas Woman’s University gymnastics meet featuring a performance by Brave Combo

When: 1 p.m. Sunday

Where: Kitty Magee Arena at Pio­neer Hall, located on Bell Avenue