When Liz Cadichon saw the Jesse White Tumbling Team take the “America’s Got Talent” stage last month, her singular thought was “‘Oh my God.’” The longtime team volunteer hadn’t known the group she’d seen practice and perform time and time again would be trying its hand at the national competition until she saw them on TV.
But there’s one thing she does know, has always known about her team: They got this.
The famed tumblers returned to “America’s Got Talent” Tuesday night, alongside 10 other acts. The hometown team appeared in the first round of live shows for the NBC competition series this season after a successful audition earlier this summer.
Cadichon was one of more than 40 fans, community members and fellow team members who packed into River North’s Jesse White Community Center, home of the tumbling group, to watch the performance in real-time Tuesday evening.
“We have to take this win,” Cadichon said ahead of the performance. “We have to. They’ve worked so hard. They’ve put so many nights and days into this.”
By 7:30 p.m., it was showtime. The tumblers — including Jesse White himself at 92 years old — made their live debut. The camera panned to team members, in their signature red and white, tumbling through the audience and onto the stage.
Back at home, watch party-goers roared with cheers. For the next three minutes, with each trick and tumbling pass that filled the performance, they kept cheering.
Judges responded in kind.
“I loved your first audition, and then I was thinking, can they make this better at the live shows?” judge Simon Cowell told the team. “It was better.”
“You are an inspiration,” Cowell continued, “to a lot of people.”
Fellow judge Howie Mandel closed out the judges’ remarks with a nod to White.
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“Congratulations to that young man at the end,” Mandel said, pointing to the former Illinois secretary of state, “for starting it all.”
Tuesday’s episode marked one of four quarterfinal shows that will determine which acts will advance to the semifinals next month. Unlike the auditions, which are prerecorded and at the will of the judges alone, advancing out of the quarterfinals rests with voting viewers. From here on out, public votes will decide who stays and who goes. Well, for the most part.
In each quarterfinal episode, judges will select one act they want to send straight through to the finale, while three more acts will advance to the semifinals based on an audience vote. Results will be announced Wednesday night.
Though a day away from knowing the team’s fate on the “AGT” stage, Tara Childress-Jackson, whose 13-year-old daughter is a Jesse White Tumbler, said the team never fails to amaze her. She and her daughter attended Tuesday’s watch party together.
“I just can’t wait to see them fly,” Childress-Jackson said a few minutes before the quarterfinals got underway.
The Jesse White Tumblers’ “AGT” appearance comes nearly a year after Chicago’s own Leo High School finished in fourth place in the series’ last season. For months, the city cheered on the Auburn Gresham-based Catholic school — long known as a place where young Black and brown men are nurtured to succeed — made Chicago proud.
The tumblers decided to follow suit after “AGT” reached out and asked the team to audition for this year’s iteration. The team had previously appeared in an early season of the show years ago but was eliminated before the competitive live rounds.
The opportunity was exciting to say the least, tumbling coach Emmanuel McGhee previously told the Tribune, between the opportunity itself and the opportunity to share the team’s story with a wider audience.
White founded the Jesse White Tumblers in 1959, making this year the group’s 67th in existence. The politician started the team as a positive force for school-age kids, to keep kids in school, off drugs and out of gangs through athletic acrobatic practice and performance.
“I’m so proud of them,” Zindzhi Williams said Tuesday after the team’s display. The mom of two tumblers, who joined her at the Jesse White Community Center to cheer on their teammates, said it’s been a “phenomenal journey so far” watching the team take on “AGT.” Her kids are in their first year with the group, joining the team back in February.
“History is made in the present,” Williams said of the decades-old troupe. “And it’s great to be a part of history.”
Williams wasted no time making her support known. By the time the team’s performance and judges’ praise had given way to a commercial break, Williams had pulled out her phone.
“Look,” she said, “I’m voting now.”
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