52 New Things -- Week 27 -- Marching Band Competition

What a hottie, right? Actually, the wool uniform WAS very hot . . .

Here's what marching band looked like in my high school: At half-time of the football game, we'd line up down by the goal posts and march onto the field to a drum cadence. Once we got to the middle of the field, we would face the audience and play a song. Then, to the drum cadence again, we'd form a pinwheel and march a while, then turn around and reverse the pinwheel. It was a pretty big deal. Then we'd march ourselves into a new formation, AC-T (for Albert City-Truesdale, our school name), and play the school song. Once it was over, we'd march ourselves right off the field, again to the drum cadence.

Did you catch the subtle omission there? We never marched and played our instruments at the same time.

I remember seeing a commercial on TV, about the same time as I was marching in our not-so-great marching band, for a marching band competition. It looked pretty cool, but everything looks cool in commercials, right?

Well, fifteen years later, I finally went to a marching drum competition in Colorado Springs that some of my youth group kids were in.

Wow. Those kids were amazing!

And Friday night, I saw it taken to the next level. Wow again. I'm just gonna put a video clip here and let you take a little looksie for yourself:

This is the team that won Friday night at a show earlier in the summer.

Let me just point out a couple of things:
1) Not only do they march and play at the same time, but in some cases, they are RUNNING and playing at the same time.
2) Besides marching and running and playing all at once, but they are also dodging flags and fake guns and helicopter blades and praying one of those flag boys doesn't lose control and smack 'em in the head. Yikes!

So, long story short: impressed.
(And also a little bit bummed, because one of my old youth group kids was supposed to be marching with that group but had bronchitis and had to sit out.)  :( 

But I got to spend time with old Ascension friends who drove all the way from Colorado Springs to see their son (not) march, so that was fun.

Some other observations:

Most interesting prop? The giant blue ball in a mesh bag that a boy dragged all over the field. I think it was supposed to be the earth? That doesn't explain the dragging . . . or what appeared to be a giant UPC symbol on the bottom of it. (Y'all know by "most interesting" I'm politely saying "weirdo," right?) But great job, kids!

Cutest costumes? The little 50's girls that I unfortunately did not get a great picture of. Let's just say that a lot of those flag kids were running around in eeek-inducing outfits, but this gang got lucky.

Most unwelcome visitor of the evening? Fish flies! Ugh! I hate those things! They hatch in the Mississippi River (this competition was in Dubuque) and then swarm around lights . . . and . . . well . . . at a stadium, you've got a lot of wattage . . . so by the end of the competition, everyone in the crowd was getting dive-bombed. I hope they didn't swoop down onto the field and that none of the kids competing had clogged horns afterwards. Yuck.

But overall? Pretty wowza.

Kinda makes me feel bad I didn't practice the baritone more . . .