Band Results: State Contest

Band Results: State Contest

By Monica Brewer

On Saturday, Oct. 18, most band members arrived to the high school at 10:30 a.m. to load the Pensky Truck.  With stuff loaded up, they headed to Treynor for this year’s State Marching Band Contest.

With the group in Treynor, unloading the truck, and getting changed into uniforms, it wasn’t until 1:30 when the warm-ups began.  After 20 minutes into warm-ups, the Trojan Guard suited up to wait a total of almost 12 minutes until the start of 3A performances.  The members marched their hardest and played their best during their last performance of their full show “Toon Tunes.”  Around 3:20 p.m., the announcers announced that Atlantic High School Trojan Guard got a II rating at contest.

Band Teacher Jarrod O’Donnell said that he was striving for a one rating, but he thinks that this contest was “the best that they ever played and they left it all out on the field.”  O’Donnell hopes that for next year, younger kids will stick it out and upperclassmen will want to stay with band  and not consider marching band with being a “Taboo word.”

This ends the season of competing for the 2014 Atlantic High School Trojan Guard.  On Friday, Oct. 24, the last football game against Creston, the Trojan Guard will only perform three out of their four songs from their show.  The song that they’re cutting out is “Nightmare Before Christmas” and the reason being is that they’re performing the song “Right Round” with the seventh and eighth grader band members on the field.