marching_band_journal2001

Waseca: Not bad for our first show. 73.9, guard and percussion both take the division gold, (AAAA Div. 2). Despite a 4th place overall finish, we showed we could do a standstill. It started to rain on our hopes of a good show at warm-ups. Then we had a band member blow out his knee finally we found that we had to do a standstill performance. Even though this was the freshmen's first competition, and the guard not having the whole routine learned, we did exceptionally well. I believe this year River Falls will fall, as well as Whitnall. And maybe, this year we will have a "Happy Ending".

D.C. Everest: Tonight we took 3rd place out of three, with the guard getting 1st in our division (7.0) and third of 17 overall. As with keeping with D.C. Everest tradition, the competition was and probably will be the coldest competition of the season. Yet with the band's overall score, I am positive we got the shaft of Music GE scoring. One judge gave us a 15.6 and another judge gave us a 9.7. My guess is a typographical error. In all we did our best, and that's all that counts!

Merril: This must be our competition of success. We have gotten 1st place last year and this year. We also seem to get a caption award other than E Sprit de Corps the last two years, (percussion last year, guard this year). We beat River Falls overall, and our scores keep steadily going up. Next week: Chippewa Falls, Menomonie.

Chippewa Falls: T-minus 7 days and counting until State Competition. With this one week left we are only .2 points away from beating Merril overall, and we have taken best guard and percussion honors by only fractions of a point each. We have one more week before this season reaches the Shootout at the Whitewater Corral.  What will be the better show? When Worlds Collide, or A Wisconsin Round Up? Next week on WSMA.

Menomonie: Why is it that there always is a GE judge that appears to stick his tongue out and says we don't like you and knocks us down 3 points lower than his compadre. Even though it was our home show, and we were performing exhibition, but he scores us 4 points lower which leaves us 1 point short of Merril. He did that to us on Saturday.  With that out of the way, we would have had best guard and percussion in our division but by about as much. This year will be a race to the finish.

State Championships:; We came, we saw, we conquered, well almost.  We came, full of spunk and hope.  We saw, how close we were to each other.  We conquered our fears of mistakes and extremely large crowds.  We overcame, from what looked like our season would be a wash, to be second place in our division and the fifth best band in the state.  Despite missing first place by .05 points, we became the best in our division musically and with the auxiliary.  We have finally beaten River Falls at state, and gotten two caption awards we get to defend next year.  This competition in a nutshell, it had a "Happy Ending".