Monday, October 23, 2006

Yep I'm behind on the good news for the school

Since the previous posting, we had another competition on the 14th and took 2nd place, which was a miracle in and of itself since we didn't capture any of the outstanding awards, so the program and visual effect and music stood on their own to score the band high enough to take 2nd place.

This past weekend was upperstate in our class (we are a 3A school and 3A band) and we had to compete against 17 other bands. The top 6 bands from upper state and top 6 from lower state go to state to compete for the overall grand championship. Well check out the website - we placed 2nd in upper state and we only lost by a little over 1 point (we scored a 90.6 and the winning band scored a 91.75) - so needless to say that we are totally excited.

On the front page pictures, my daughter is in the middle back with her arm around her friend and she is whispering something to her (her head is turned so can't see her face) but on the next picture down, same spot, she has her face towards the camera - Her birthday is Thursday and she will be 14. On the pictures below the schedule information - the group with the red shirts all in the stands - my daughter is on the end of the second row right in front of the black girl and behind the really short girl. She is the red headed girl on the far right as you are looking at the picture, near the other band that got caught in our picture - lol -

Since the previous posting, my oldest has turned 21 and my youngest is now a preteen (well he actually had turned 12 a couple of weeks prior to that posting but since I am mentioning ages, I figured I should put him in too -

During the competition before they gave the awards, I had picked our band as third and the band that received third, I had them as second. I had fourth to a band that didn't even place and had between 5th and 6th to one of the two bands that actually took 5th, 6th (the one that took 6th, I didn't have placed either but the last band that performed, taking 4th place, I had as between 5th or 6th - I think I had the last band that performed as 6th and the third from the bottom as 5th. So only two of my guesses were correct but I'm glad since that put us as 2nd place instead of 3rd where I had us -

So congrats to the marching band that has worked super hard to come this far and hopefully next week we will be in the top 3 to receive a plaque or award or medal - whatever is given to the top 3 bands - more then - see you on the field - E :)

Sunday, October 08, 2006

Some really good news for the marching band

The marching band (at present known as the Bear Brigrade, but that name is supposed to be changing) had two competitions this past weekend and so were on the road a good bit. I got to the second competition right as the last AA class band was performing; which is great, because the AAA and AAAA bands were to follow (we performed in AAAA at the second competition).

Upon arriving, we got to see the awards for the A and AA bands - cool looking costumes on one of the groups and it has inspired a short story for a contest -

After that, we watched all the AAA and AAAA bands perform, we were the last performing group before the exhibition band (school sponsoring the competition) and the awards. Our band placed 3rd out of 4 teams competing with the difference between first and third only being 0.95 points - we scored (I think) a 90.3 and the first place band was 91.25 - so not much room to make too much difference on the scores. We also took best drumline and best color guard (or front line as it is called sometimes)

So we had to wait around until the first competition's awards and had a person phone us to tell us the results - and (drumroll please) - we took best drumline, best colorguard, and best hornline and first place. We also took Silver Grand Champions in classes 1 - 4A bands - first time in our school's history of taking the Grand Champion at a competition -

Last week at our first competition, we also took best drumline and 3rd place with the difference between first and third only being 1.85 points - we scored an 88.9, second place scored an 89.3 and first place was a 90.75 - so as you can see these scores are very close and the bands are high quality in competitions

So congrats to our school for achieving a first - almost sweeping the categories of extra trophies and doing a great job performing twice in the same day - E :)