Have you ever watched an exciting, entertaining, and incredible performance? Well, the marching band students of South High went to one with over 200 groups split into divisions all around the United States.
The trip took place on Oct. 20-22 at Lucas Oil Stadium. The Spirit of ‘76 performed “Out Of The Loop,” which features the song “The National Anthem” by Radiohead.
“We started with pre-camp in June for a week mainly to learn the music. Marching technically started on August 2,” junior Zero Meckfessel said.
These students have been working very hard and putting in many hours to improve for this trip.
“When school started we practiced 3 hours a day 5 days a week,” freshman Camilla Eversole said.
For the past few years students of South have been going on trips like these.
“We like to give students experience; we have been going on trips for a couple of years and wanted to give the students a chance to see the bands in the country,” Matt Wall, South High’s band teacher, said.
The trip to Indianapolis took around 4 ½ hours. Eversole said “band kids” tend to suffer from an unfair stereotype.
“Many people might not believe this but band kids are not too terrible,” Eversole said. “Obviously they have their moments but I think that a lot of people don’t like them because they are band kids. They see how other kids act and automatically think that’s how all of them act but the school bus ride was actually nice.”
This trip was a little different than usual because there was a pretty big crowd which can be a little nerve-wracking, but South’s group did great!
All of these students were put under lots of pressure but in the end, all their hard work paid off.
“I was extremely nervous because it was an NFL field so it was different from what we were used to. There was a giant crowd so it was a little intimidating. And seeing the bands that went before us made it kind of nerve-wracking, but overall I was still really excited to get to perform!” Maiyah Syed, a sophomore on the color guard said.
Remembering why they joined Guard also helped with the nervousness.
“I’ve been a part of Guard for 1 season and I knew I wanted to do color guard since last year when she saw a team at another football game,” Eversole said.
Unfortunately, a high school from Indiana took the top prize, over the Patriots.
“They won because they had a big band. They were very good and in most competitions the bigger the band, the more points you get because you get better visuals. They also had good music and played very loud. Their score ended up being 90.32/100,” Eversole said.
South ended up with a score of 57th place out of 66.
“Honestly this was one of our better runs compared to the 7 other performances that we did in front of a crowd this year!” Meckfessel said.
South’s team improved because of how responsible they were when planning and preparing for the trip.
“How well the kids behaved and were adaptable to some of the changes in the program leading up to the trip were handled well,” Wall said.
Because she has one year left in high school band, Meckfessel said she learned from this year’s trip.
“Seeing the bands at finals was pretty memorable because I got to see what it would be like as I get older,” Meckfessel said.