Marching band

Rachel joined the Copper Thunder Marching Band this year at the urging of Eliza. Despite the crazy hot and long band camp in the middle of July, and the long hours at practice and competitions and football games, she had a good time and wants to stick around and do it again next year. 

The last night of band camp they got into their uniforms and did a SHORT performance playing they music they had learned that week.

In July and August there was a lot of practices most Monday, Thursday and Saturdays. By September they were ready to perform. They participated in a parade for the Vail Prickly Pear Festival, then that night performed a community preview show to have a chance to perform their field show in front of an audience once before their first competition of the year the following week.

In September they had their first competition, a Bands of America competition in New Mexico. I was able to come along as a chaperone.

Before heading to New Mexico they made a couple stops at local elementary schools to do some short performances. 

The day of the competition was super hot. One girl ended up nearly fainting with heat exhaustion. We were all happy to get out of the sun any chance we got. I ended up with a sun burn with a very distinct line where my "I'm with the Band" lanyard was.

The brass crew:

Performing:

They invited the middle school kids to one of the football games. The DSMS band director didn't pass along the info, but Annie knew about it because of Rachel, so she was the only Desert Sky kid that showed up. She had a lot of fun despite not having the music ahead of time to practice with and not knowing anyone. 

In October the band went to the U of A Band Day competition. They were able to place 6th out of 19 bands. 

The next few weeks of band was COLD. Football games and competitions gave me a chance to try out wool socks and long underwear and find out that the socks worked great, but I would need more layers for trek because the long underwear wasn't very good at keeping me warm.

In November the marching season wrapped up. Here's all the band at senior night:

Two days later the band headed up to Buckeye for the State Marching Band competition where they earned 9th place and got the highest score they've ever received in the history of the program.

The last thing for the marching band was at the Fine Arts Showcase the last week of school before Christmas. They performed outside in the freezing cold for a couple songs. Then we went inside and Rachel performed in the concert band in a much warmer environment.