Celebrating 75 Years of Step Sing! (Or, “A Great Injustice Finally Righted”)

Explaining Step Sing to a parent who has never experienced it is like describing the ocean to someone from Kansas. “It’s huge. It’s loud. It will be crawling with people in colorful outfits from all over the world.”

I first experienced Step Sing in the winter of 1995, my freshman year at Samford. I grew up in Massachusetts and already felt like a fish out of water in Alabama. Why do strangers keep asking me, “How’s your day going?” What’s their angle? Turns out their angle was kindness. My first semester was less than stellar, which is a polite way of saying I was on the borderline of losing all my scholarships academically. When I returned in January though, an upperclassman named Dave Waller asked me if I wanted to be in the Men’s Independent Step Sing show.

Dave was leading the charge that year for the group and had selected “Grease” as our theme. I wasn’t completely clear what he meant by, “We’ll learn an intense medley of songs, choreography and showmanship in an incredibly short timeframe,” but I was desperate for community. Turns out, that’s the secret sauce of Step Sing.

The singing is better than you think. The dance moves are surprisingly crisp for men and women who didn’t even know the phrase “step ball change” prior to signing up. The costumes look like there was a bottomless budget. As an audience member, you can experience all of that from your seat, but what you might miss unless you’ve been in Step Sing is the community.

Few things knit the entire campus of Samford together like Step Sing. From sprinting to the sign-up location to get a spot to the theme reveals to the thunderous cheering on Saturday night, our little corner of Homewood crackles with excitement. Of course it does because, in many ways, Step Sing is a miracle. How do I know? You’re a parent. Did you ever try to talk your teenage son into learning how to dance and sing? Imagine if senior year of high school you said, “Hey, this weekend you’re going to learn how to tap dance while singing a truncated version of a Barry Manilow song.”

How would that go?

It wouldn’t.

But for one glorious weekend, even us boys get our dancing shoes on.

I’ve never danced as hard as I danced that year in Step Sing. We were the dark horse. This was years before “Dudes a Plenty” would become a force in the Step Sing world challenging the much bigger Greek teams. Our costumes were jeans and white t-shirts. Our hair was slicked back like we were about to jump into a 1950s hot rod. We were not a ragtag group of young men in that moment. We were Greased Lightnin!

We won the men’s division but lost, aka were robbed, of the Sweepstakes. Zeta took the trophy with an admittedly delightful gold miner theme. That night in the wings of the Wright Center, I swore that 29 years later I would get my revenge. Like Edmond Dantès in The Count of Monte Cristo, I waited patiently for nearly three decades for Julie Boyd to request I write this article.

At last, the moment I’ve been waiting for has arrived and I can tell thousands of people about this musical miscarriage of justice. Our show was fantastic. Grease is not just a theme, it’s an American icon. We were like the cast of Hamilton up there, just too ahead of our time. The judges couldn’t handle our originality. Experts thought the internet would be a fad, too. Horse owners swore nobody would want one of Ford’s motorized vehicles. It’s the innovator’s curse.

I’d like to think that somewhere out there, the judges are still regretting their decision and thinking about Step Sing 1995 as much as I am. I have my doubts.

What Is Step Sing?

It’s the greatest show on earth.

If you’ve never seen it before, I am jealous for you.

If you have, how amazing does Grease sound as a theme? Seriously, so perfect, right?

About Jon Acuff

Jon Acuff is a New York Times bestselling author of 10 books and a proud 1998 Samford alumnus. His wife, Jenny, attended Samford, and his two daughters, L.E. and McRae, are both Samford Chi Omegas. He and his wife live in Franklin, Tennessee. He agreed to write this article in exchange for two Saturday night Step Sing tickets because he can’t wait for the 75th anniversary.