Personal Narrative - Marching Band Competition :: Personal Narrative Essays

Personal Narrative- Marching Band Competition This season was only the second year that I had been in marching band, even though we did do parades in middle school. The year before, I was selected to be drum major of the upcoming marching season. I was excited to meet the challenge of getting back to the state championships. It was also nerve-racking because I felt if we didn't make it to state, it would be my fault. To be truthful, later on I experienced both sentiments from some of the most influential, heart-warming, absolutely awesome friends that I have ever had the pleasure of knowing. This would be the year that our band would adopt its slogan, its mission statement: Band #1. Two weeks before school even started, the Hotchkiss High School Marching Band began its march to the state-qualifying competition in Delta. We worked four hours a day for five days, getting our fundamentals going and getting a feel for our new show. Once school did start, we started practice at 7:00 a.m. and went for two hours every day, working on music and marching. Our band was once again small (eighteen people!), but our sound was great. It was actually easier trying to teach a smaller group because of the difficulty of the moves we were attempting. Of course, I didn't help matters much by my trials of congeniality with the podium. I figured if I didn't fly off with flapping of my arms, then surely I would walk right off the stand. The season shuffled along with surprising ease. By this time we had learned all of the show and were weeding it out to make it perfect. While fulfilling the amount of work needed to create a spectacular performance, we had a little fun in Fort Collins at the CSU Band Day. Along with the CSU Marching Band, our band learned their marching songs and sets and performed a show for a crowd of over 15,000 people! This fun could only last so long, however, and so the Hotchkiss High School Marching Band prepared for Grand Junction band day. We traversed the sixty miles down to the city in which we would compete. The day became toasty as it was still the start of October. Despite the heat, the parade amazingly stayed together and field show brought a tear to our director's eye. She promptly let us know, though, that it would take more next time-we knew it would, too.