The headline says that the Pocatello High School marching band is undefeated. I was stunned at the headline! How are they undefeated? Was there some kind of a battle, like “band football” or something? No one on the staff wanted to take credit for the story, either. Most articles in the Idaho State Journal are written by a person whose email address is put at the end of the article … this story is by “Journal Staff”. I’m not sure I would want to take credit for the headline, either.
Now if the band would only march somewhere besides at the Red Rocks Marching Competition in St. George, Utah. What is a parade without a band? The annual Night Lights Parade will be this Friday evening at 6:30 p.m. Some 60 entries will be in the parade … but no band. Maybe that’s how they stay undefeated?
The Air Academy March Band won the Colo. State Championship. However, I don’t know about that undeafeated stuff.
DCS
Hey Uncle Kay, I was catching up on your life, and when I came across this, I was so happy! As you may or may not know, Aaron and I met in band camp in high school. He was the drum major, the guy that conducts the band, and I was the section leader of the alto saxophones! Anyways, to answer your question about how you become undefeated…there are marching band competitions that bands from all over the area go to and compete to see who has the best music, best marching skills, etc. That is really a great thing for them that they are undefeated!! It really is a ton of fun being in the marching band! Congratulations to them!!!
I was in that band, I am the fourth (closest/largest) bass drum, in the picture. The headline is wrong, though I am sad to say. Yes, our band went undefeated in all five of the competitions we went to that year. By undefeated I mean that we took first place at every one, including the Red Rocks competition in St. George. However, in marching band competitions, at least in our area, I don’t know about the rest of the country, bands are scored in many different areas: musical performance, visual performance, percussion, colorguard, and overall. At every competition the PHS band took first overall and the musical performance caption. I think we took the visual caption four out of the five, however we only won the colorguard caption once, and drumline not at all. So the article is wrong in that aspect, around here everybody knows that the Idaho State Journal rarely reports things correctly.
Also, at the end of the article, it says that this is the first time the band has won the Red Rocks competition two years in a row. Sorry to say it but this was the first year PHS ever went to that competition. The year after that (last year) we took second place at Red Rocks. The band is actually currently at that competition again as I type this out haha, though I don’t know what they placed yet, that’s in a couple hours.
Overall, to clear up some things: the band competed at in Pocatello for the Idaho Marching Invitational, Davis UT for the Davis invitational, Kaysville UT for the Mt. Timpinogos competition, Logan UT for the Bridgerland Band Invitational, and at Red Rocks.
The bands aren’t judged on marching in parades, they march on football fields, doing complex marching charts and visual movements, all on step together.
That’s about all I got! Thanks for putting this up, it was cool to find it online! Hope I helped clear up some things and didn’t sound too pompous. Though I’m posting this comment two years after that article and the other two posts haha.