It was the last chance to compete before the big one in Los Angeles.

Alicia Rule, a Doherty High School sophomore, did the best she has done on Sunday at Colorado's Fall Feis at the Larimer County Fairgrounds. A feis (pronounced fesh) is an Irish dance competition. Alicia has been Irish dancing since she was in kindergarten and is currently enrolled in the Bennett School of Irish Dance in Denver.

"The big one" is the U.S. Western Region Oireachtas (another term for an Irish dance competition pronounced oh-rock-tus) being held in Los Angeles around Thanksgiving. While there, Alicia will be competing at the highest level of competition in Irish dance, championships. There are two larger-level competitions, U.S. Nationals and Worlds, the former held around July 4, the latter between Palm Sunday and Easter. Worlds is usually held in Ireland, but it has been in Scotland and will be in Philadelphia in 2009.

In her competitions this year, Alicia has been dancing to reels (soft shoe) and hornpipes (hard shoe) as well as a "set dance" to a song titled "Madame Bonaparte." The way the competitions run, next year Alicia will dance to slip jigs and treble jigs. She may continue with her current set dance or have her teacher choreograph another.

In addition to working on her own dances, she has been helping some of the younger dancers with their dances. Two of them moved up to the higher levels as well during Fall Feis. Alicia started helping them when another advanced dancer, Mary Pearl, who had been teaching her, left to study in France for a year. Alicia said that it was now her turn to pass on what she had learned as well.