Marching Band season officially started in September and within the first couple weeks director Mr. Elks along with the members of the AHS Marching Band are all very excited and all have some expectations and goals they hope to complete.
Director Mr. Elks said, “The ultimate goal is to make state, we qualified for state last year for the first time in five years, so the goal is to continue that trend. The other goal is actually in the creation of the show, it’s heavily student driven so that’s a big change. I give the students a rough idea of what it looks like, but how we get from point A to point B is heavily driven by student input.”
AHS Marching Band has some good goals set for this year but while interviewing staff and band members they all said that during practice and preparation, it’s all a lot of hard work, time, and effort.
“It’s a lot of work that goes into it”, said senior Kodi Haswell. “You have to give all your effort into marching band, with staying in time, memorizing your music, learning new parts, listening to everybody else, keeping your feet in time, making sure you have everything prepared. It’s a little stressful and hard but it’s worth it in the end”.
Senior Michael Rascinowski said, “It’s a good amount of work, it’s a lot of different things to think about at the same time like you gotta think about music, marching, not marching, timing and everything so it’s a lot.
The Marching Band is very much a group that’s filled with hard working dedicated musicians but while interviewing Elks and other band members it sounds like it’s more than music. During interviews when asking about their favorite parts of marching band something that was really highlighted was the community.
Senior Kodi Haswell said that he does marching band because of the community and being able to play music. “Music has given me a place to be whenever I feel like I couldn’t be anywhere else. It can be stressful sometimes but most of the time it will be the most inviting comfortable fun place so it’s amazing, ten out of ten” he said.
“It’s a pretty tight knit group of people where the people who are in it are dedicated and they want to be there”, said Mr Elks. “They show up, they try their best and they really look out for each other they’re a really close group of people, and when we go to competitions you see that across from school to school which is really cool to see, it is very much a culture of marching band.”
So with everything I’ve heard it sounds like everyone should be excited to see what the AHS marching band does this year with the amount of excitement, dedication, and passion that comes from the group and I think we can expect them to do very well this season.
