The season begins usually with about 2 weeks of summer left. This is the beginning of band camp. Don’t let the name scare you, band camp is actually a lot of fun. Monday through Friday for 2 weeks beginning at 8 in the morning and ending around the same time at night, the members of the band learns the basic fundamentals of playing your instrument as well as marching. At the beginning of the second week the students receive the music for this season and begin to put it together with different marching formations to form the show.

Practices after school begins take place after every school day until about 5 pm. These practices are usually used to make adjustments to the show to make it better for competition.

Shortly after camp is over, the competitions begin to take place. Competitions are always on  Saturdays and can make for a 12 to 14 hour day. All the bands that are participating get to perform in the preliminary round. A band will only compete against other bands in their division in preliminaries. Then only the top 8 to 16 scoring bands get to move on to the finals and compete against all the other finalists regardless of their division. After finals, awards are presented to the bands who out performed the others in specific categories as well as over all.

“Getting my first best percussion in a competition was the greatest feeling ever, I had originally hoped to get at least on before I graduated”, said Jacob Lesinski, a percussionist who will be a sophomore next year.

The band is under the direction of Jeff Moorman and Paul Ahlemeyer, who are both very passionate about music.

“Performing a show is pure fun on the football field, the true purpose of a football field is for marching band” said Ahlemeyer.

And he’s right. Marching band is just pure fun. From day 1 of camp to the last competition of the season the member of the band are doing something they love the whole time.

They are making music.