Category: The Band Director

Here’s the story of the night:

Stony Point vs. McNeil HS football game. The game is going fairly well, both teams are playing hard and the score is fairly even. Halftime comes and the McNeil band does their halftime show and goes a bit over their time (but what band doesn’t the first time they put their whole show plus drill team dance on the field?) but not by much. Our band goes on the field to do the show, they get through the drill team song, the opener and the ballad and I notice we’re running low on time (but there is still almost 2 minutes on the clock) and the team is already waiting to run through their tunnel thing. We get about 1/4 of the way through the closer and there’s 1:09 on the clock and the football team decides to run onto the field!!! The band is STILL MARCHING THEIR SHOW!!!! I’m in the pressbox, appauled and parents and families are looking back seeing what we’re going to do. The drum majors stop the band and once all the team has passed by on the edge of the field (between the pit and the band), they signal the band to come off the field. Although very confused, they do.

All this time, where are the coaches you ask? Right next to the team. They make NO attempt to stop their kids and seem to have no regard for the safety of kids with no pads and helmets potentially getting hit by a football player running at full speed. Although many parents encouraged us to pack up an go home at that moment, we stay the rest of the game and perform the closer at the end of the game. At no point (even after we all returned to the school) did any coach offer an explaination nor apology. There were at least 4 administrators at the game – not one came over to see if our kids, no, THEIR KIDS were okay. Can you believe that???

We had an unexpected early release today. About 11:30, the power went out in bits of the school. It was really weird because for example, the lights in the music library cut out but the power in the plugs were still going strong. Same thing in the band hall – one switch of lights were going but the other weren’t. The office made an announcement about intermittent power outtage through the school and they were working on it. About 30 minutes later, all the power went out. We had some band moms working in the uniform room (the new uniforms are in – more on that in another blog) and I told them if the power isn’t back on by 12:30, they were going to call school for the day. 12:40 and an announcement comes on saying they were arranging for transportation and they would let us know when to release school for the day! They finally released everyone at 1:30 only for all the lights to come back on again…go figure! At least my band got to rehearse and sightread some new music. They need every sightreading rehearsal they can get and they enjoy it (YAY!). So, I’m home now, getting ready for the girls to come over for Grey’s Anatomy (we’ll miss you, Mon!). What an interesting day!

We had our school day, our after school run through, inspection and before we knew it, we were on the bus, headed to our first game of the season. We had no idea how the Reagan vs. Stony Point would end up. The traffic to the game was light and easy and although we thought we would get there late and get a hard time for it, we got there ontime and was able to play the fight song for the team as they ran through the banner!!

The Tigers scored early and often and by halftime and I was up in the pressbox, we were told that we might as well as just pack up and go home ’cause the outcome of the game was already obvious!! I couldn’t believe how these Tigers, whom I’ve seen lose for 4 years were scoring and defending like crazy!! Even in the sprinkle that turned into rain, the Raiders couldn’t stop ’em!

Halftime went really well – no one fell down on that sloppy field – and the second half went just as well. By the middle of the 4th quarter, we felt it was going to be a shut out. It would have been our first ever! Until the Raiders scored. 😦 BUT, they didn’t make their extra point and we scored yet again. When it was all said and done, we were drenched but had won 47-6!! I have a feeling this year’s football season will be more fun than even last year’s was.

We drove home in the rain and got home safely. The crew went out to eat as normally and I finally got home around 1:30 am and I was EXHAUSTED!! I was asleep by the time my head hit the pillow.

Today, I’m lazying around with the cats and I’ll get a few things done tomorrow. I can’t wait until next week – first home game! Who wants to come along?

I really didn’t think early on The Cadets would land that low but watching the season, none of these results surprise me:

Place Corps Score
DIVISION I
1 The Cavaliers 97.200
2 Phantom Regiment 96.850
3 Blue Devils 96.550
4 Bluecoats 93.175
5 The Cadets 93.075
6 Santa Clara Vanguard 92.350
7 Blue Knights 90.125
8 Carolina Crown 89.975
9 Madison Scouts 87.700
10 Boston Crusaders 87.325
11 Glassmen 86.000
12 Spirit from JSU 84.825

Traci Finch (an SPHS alum) won Best Drum Major for Division III!!! I wanted to link the article from DCI.org but their servers are a smidge busy right now with everyone looking at results.

No, I got it. Here’s that link to Traci’s story!!

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Here’s the login link.
(I love copy/paste.)