Entering the Rockford stadium, the energy was raised, hopes were high and marchers were filled with confidence. Due to their previous success and their hard work over the past few weeks, this confidence was well founded as the band went into their first invitational.
The band is known for their creative and imaginative themed shows that are performed for the community every Friday night. On Saturday September 21, they took their show to compete against the top schools in their flight at the 41st Annual Rockford Marching Invitational.
Director Gregory Wells was thrilled going into the competition to not only show off their routine, but also give his students a taste of what their upcoming season will be like.
“[Northview has] been attending the Rockford Scholastic competition for over 40 years now as our first competition,” Wells said. “It’s a long standing tradition, and always brings back many fond memories of the start of our competitive season.”
Walking off the field after their performance, marchers and directors felt they had put out the best show they could, and it was reflected in the judges’ opinion. Overall they placed second and rounded up a total score of 80.4, which perfectly hit the number the band tries to reach at this invitational.
“We generally try to score above an 80 which is kind of our benchmark for this competition, and we did which was good. Our score was about average and what we were shooting for,” Wells said.
Since this was their first competition of the season, Wells feels the students performed well under the pressure.
“Musically and visually I think they performed at the level I was hoping they would get to,” Wells said. “There was nothing that got worse at performance so the kids overcame the nerves and were just well prepared. I was happy with how they looked and how they sounded.”
Band leaders reciprocate Wells’ satisfaction. Senior drum major Hannah Hoover is glad that they now have a foundation performance for their upcoming season.
“The entire show as a whole went well. We got a good score especially for it being the first competition I think it was higher than it normally is,” Hoover said. “Now we have it over with so I think the rest of the season is going to go a lot better now that we have the initial [one] done.”
With all of the band’s success this past weekend, there’s one thing that factors into that most: organization and planning.
“We had a lot of preparation like band camp, and rehearsal wise it was the same but we have techs which are people that come in and help,” Hoover said. “Last year was our techs first year so there were different things that she was doing. This year it felt very organized and we had a set plan and so a lot of things went smoothly.”
Like any sort of competition, there is always room for improvement. Wells saw this as a chance to get the judge’s opinion on what to fix and correct.
“[There] were some individual little spots where someone is gonna forget to do one of those things that we all do together. Those little things are pretty minor,” Wells said. “Listening to the judges, they’re pointing out things that we’ve been saying we need to work on. That’s always a good thing when your scores and adjudication match what you’ve been saying to the class about what we need to do next.”
Senior Peyton Underhill has been a member of the marching band for four years and is also on the drumline. She felt the competition as a whole was a great way to kickstart the season.
“We executed what we have been working on the past couple of weeks well. It was a good rep[etition] of the music we did. From warm ups to how smoothly it ran, it went well,” Underhill said.
Overall, the band performed well and set a standard for their upcoming season.
“Now that we have [our first competition] under our belt, people can learn the different mistakes that they might make on a different field or whatever and they can take that into every other competition,” Hoover said.
