The Kalloway (Galloway and Koon) Mock Rock team poses on the night of Mock Rock.
Courtesy | Student Activities Board

Kalloway claims Mock Rock title with movie reenactments

With a routine featuring a giant sand worm from “Dune,” a dance-off between “Star Wars” characters, and a bald Gru from the “Despicable Me” movie, Galloway Residence won Hillsdale College’s Mock Rock competition for the second year in a row, this time with Koon Residence in the team Kalloway.

Simpson Residence took first overall in the homecoming competition, with 980 points, for the third year in a row.

Junior Elijah Ahrens, one of the choreographers and a resident assistant for Galloway, said he and others let dancers play to their strengths.

“Instead of trying to make all 50 guys do the same exact thing, we allowed different guys to do things that they were the best at,” Ahrens said. “For example, we had one guy who couldn’t really fit in with one of our groups, so we just gave him a lightsaber and put him out in front of the group and really allowed him to use his own unique style to enhance things.”

Freshman Galloway resident Jonah Meduna said that he was not nervous during the dance.

“During the dance, I know for me and for a lot of the guys I was talking to, we practiced it so much that we knew what we were doing, and we really all just focused in and we weren’t too worried about it, because we knew that we’d done it before,” Meduna said.

Freshman Camryn Juelg said Kalloway’s dance was her favorite.

“When they brought out that giant alien creature in the middle of a battlefield while dancing, I was awestruck,” Juelg said.

Olds Residence tied with Simpson Residence for second place in the dance competition.

“I don’t think Olds has ever placed in Mock Rock, like ever,” said sophomore Audrey Lang, the choreographer for Olds. “So not only placing, but getting second place with Simpson was a dream come true. We all absolutely freaked out when they announced the tie for second. I think I went in shock, I couldn’t get any words out. It was amazing. Just being there with the Olds girls and getting to experience that with them was the best thing ever.”

Junior David Gregory, the house director of Niedfelt Residence, said the Niedfelt men were very intentional about preparing their dances.

“As soon as the theme drops, we have someone working on making our mix for it, just putting all the songs together. About two weeks from Mock Rock, we start practicing. It’s an hour per night, we’ll take one day off a week, and we just try to work through the dance front to end,” Gregory said. “Because the timing is so tight, we put all of our work choreographing the dance basically the night before. So it’s very stressful and it takes quite a bit of time, but it works for us.”

Lang also noted the time-intensive nature of both designing choreography and teaching it.

“The hardest part was the time constraint,” Lang said. “There are only a few days between the theme drop and the start of practice. I had a lot of ideas coming in, but once the theme came out, we had to trash them and come up with new stuff really quickly. We were pretty much choreographing the dances a few hours before we taught them.”

Multiple participants in Mock Rock highlighted the positive effect that the competitions had on their dorms’ senses of community.

“Mock Rock is the chief thing that brings together and especially ushers the new guys, the freshmen, into dorm culture and community in Simpson. It’s a great way to bring together all the guys,” said Charlie Taylor, a sophomore who participated in Simpson’s dance.

Meduna said that his experience in Mock Rock this year, though intensive, has definitely convinced him to do it again in 2026.

“It was such a blast dancing with all my friends and kind of learning how to do something as a group like that,” Meduna said. “Just being part of the group and learning to work together like that is really good.”

Taylor said Mock Rock was also a great way to build character, both now and for the future.

“One of the reasons that we care so much about winning is because if you are able to fully commit yourself to a task, even if it’s a silly task, then you’ll be better at fully putting yourself to important tasks,” Taylor said. “And so by putting all the work that we do into Mock Rock and Homecoming, we believe that that will help us to become better men in the real world, becoming husbands and fathers and whatever else may lie in wait for us.”

Editor’s Note: A previous version of this article misattributed the last quote as David Bellet. The error has been corrected.