This past Saturday, September 21, the Francis Howell North marching band competed at the Saint Charles West Marching Band Festival at Saint Charles West. The band received Best visual in the Silver Division, seventh out of 14 in preliminaries, and fourth overall in finals. The band performed “The Boxer” and played as a complete band for the first time this season.

“it was the first time we were competing as a complete show.” Trumpet player Abby Hinman said. “I feel like it might have hurt us with the small details, not everyone had the stamina to keep up, but it might have also helped us by having a more complete and complex overall show.”

According to member of the band, Chris Steimel, the band did not do as well in preliminaries as they had planned and had reluctantly made it into finals. After preliminaries, their score improved by five points and put the band in fourth place overall.

“We should’ve put in more effort into preliminaries,” Steimel said. “There was a lack of focus during preliminaries that we put into finals”

the band’s next competition is September 27, at the Lafayette Contest of Champions. The band hopes to do better than they have done before and take away something new to improve on.

“I’m very proud of this competition because we jumped a lot with points.” Trumpet Section Leader Sammie Savala said. “ I just wish we weren’t a second time band. Improving is always good but it would be nice to be 100% the first time. Our final performance was phenomenal, our big hit in the ballad was just amazing. A lot of our seniors were crying because that was our best performance to date. Hopefully we can continue this energy into our next competition.”