The marching band has been working at preparing for their first upcoming competition. The band encountered challenges that they’ve worked around in order to prepare effectively.
Band director Daniel Upton has been making sure that his students and other marching band members productively work on the show. During today’s rehearsal, the band and other outdoor activities were mandated to stay inside for practice due to the harsh heat.
“It was too hot, the heat index was too high. [The band’s] safety is our number one priority. I guess that we needed time to work on the music which we were probably gonna spend a portion of today and tomorrow inside anyway, just not the whole time. It’s the nature of the beast when you have an outdoor organization like this.” Upton said. “Despite the forced indoor conditions, we got a lot done musically, which we really needed to do.”
Weather is not the only challenge that the band has been faced with during the early season. Music that they’ve hoped to work on, was delayed in arrival causing the band to be behind. This didn’t stop them from working extra hard to get back on track.
“During band camp our goal is to get about two thirds of the show done, usually the opener and the ballad, the slow movement, which we did and then we worked during the next couple weeks of school to get the closer incorporated so we’re on page with that. We got the finalized music for the closer just a little bit late, it put us just a little behind in that manner but we’re where we are normally at this time.” Upton said. “We’re finishing up putting the music and the closer together and then we got a portion of the drill done last week and then hopefully Thursday we’ll get more of that and ideally all the drill is in place for next saturday, if it’s not it’s not the end of the world and that happens for a lot of schools.”
With their first competition of the season coming up, the band is hard at work and keeping their hopes high, not letting these obstacles get to the best of them. Along with the band, Upton has high hopes and big goals.
“The goal is for us to get better every performance we have, and that’s our next performance. We would not have had one since the last football game. That’s a long span of time in between performing, so the odds are in our favor to meet that goal of performing better.” Upton said. “We’re going to have a lot more on the field, we’re going to have a lot more of the stuff incorporated, this is a competition we’ve not gone to before so it’ll be exciting to see some different programs. It’s early season so everyone’s in the same boat.”
