Marching band season is officially over. The best three months of my life have reduced to nothing but memories. Fond memories that I can look back on and smile. The sounds of our show have blown away in the wind, never to be played again. All the seniors have performed their last show with FMHS. It’s bittersweet, looking back on the best times of my life knowing that they’re over.
Something that’s more bitter than bittersweet is the fact that marching band receives nothing but disrespect from other students. There have been so many times that I’ve overheard snippets in the hallway, saying that marching band does no work, or that they can barely accomplish anything. “Marching band does nothing except walk!” I’ve heard so many people say. But marching band does so, so, so much more.
We start work in July. Yes, we work outside for eight hours a day, beginning in July and going up until the start of school. We work 8 am to 5 pm, for two to three weeks before school even starts. Then, when school starts, we have rehearsal from 3:15 to 5:30 every day. During August, it’s really hot outside at that time. But still, we’re out there for over two hours working on a show that will only last eight minutes. It takes us three months to perfect eight minutes. That’s how meticulous and determined we are to get it right.
State Competitions are a different story. We arrive to the school early in the morning, on a day when no one else has school. We load onto a bus and spend 3-4 hours driving over the mountains, then stop in about Vail for a three hour rehearsal. Do you know anyone else who delays a five hour drive just to have a rehearsal? When we arrive to State, we spend every moment together, either rehearsing or creating life long memories. We practice when it’s below freezing, when we can’t feel our hands or our faces. Then we have performances, where there are judges down on the field to watch our every movement. During our semifinal performance, a judge had to run out of the way to avoid getting run over by a stampede of flutes going his direction. Out of twenty bands, only eight make it to Finals. Once Final performances are over, all of the bands have to stand outside when it’s barely twenty degrees for a painfully long amount of time while awards are being handed out. Then, when it’s past midnight, we finally load the buses and get to go back to the hotel, where we leave early the next morning.
Marching band is a team. A team with 117 players, all of which have an individual role within the band. There are captains, our section leaders, which lead us towards our goal of greatness. Coordinating our team, especially in marching band. Imagine getting 117 people to put their foot on the ground at the exact same time, then getting them to do that again, hundreds and hundreds of times. Some of these people are wearing 40 pound instruments. We have to play the exact right notes and the dynamics, and perfect marching, while sometimes even doing choreography. Marching band, as I’ve heard described many times, is multitasking on steroids.
Even through all this, we manage to accomplish so much. This year, our band made history. We had such a good score for our regional competition that we skipped Quarter Finals and went straight to Semi Finals. Our band also got the highest score we’ve ever achieved, hitting 81.65 score at our Final performance. I was honored to be part of such a great program this year.
Overall, it doesn’t matter to me what anyone says about marching band. Sure, I don’t like when people say that marching band is stupid. But I know that it’s not. I know that it gave me the best months of my life, gave me some of the most amazing people I’ve ever met, and memories that I’ll have for the rest of my life. I’m sad that it’s over. That there won’t be another run of our show. But then I just remember that next year I get to recreate all these memories. It will all repeat. There will be a new show to be proud of. New music to memorize. New friends to make. Everything will be perfect once again.
Works Cited:
Dowers, Heather. “Why Marching Band Is So Important To Us.” Odyssey, 11 July 2016, www.theodysseyonline.com/why-marching-band-important.
DeZwaan, Caitlin. “Reasons Why Marching Band Is Anything But Easy.” Odyssey, 30 Aug. 2017, www.theodysseyonline.com/reasons-why-marching-band-anything-but-easy.