One of the largest school activities at our school is, without a doubt, marching band. The band has also enjoyed great success this year as they attend various competitions.

“This year we’ve already won best auxiliary, best visuals, and we made finals at Layfayette,” sophomore Maggie Duncan said. “We’re all really excited, we appreciate it a lot more because of our placing last year. We all went crazy when we got seventh, hugging each other and everything. I know a lot of bands probably would have brushed that off.”

The band has the attitude that they will work as hard as they can and that they will hopefully be recognized for their work.

“Just this past weekend at the Washington Marching Festival, the band managed to get second place out of the seven bands in our division,” Drum Major Senior Sam Sharpsteen said. “Not only that, but looking at our scores. We got the second highest score out of all 18 schools that came to the competition, and our color guard won first place by a landslide.”

Part of band’s success has come from their rigorous practices, as well as a new design for drills.

“Last year we’d score high in other areas, but our marching score always dragged us down,” Duncan said. “This year we got a new drill guy and we started using these nifty little dot sheets to help you find your spot. It’s kind of like graph coordinates. Last year we had these pages with everyone’s spot on it, and you had to guess how many steps off the line you were and things like that.”

Another part of the band’s success comes from their unison, camaraderie and overall confidence in their performance.

“It’s the biggest family in the school.” senior Adam Goff said. “ When 170 kids have to work together to perform in unison you build bonds that don’t easily get broken. My five and a half years of band experience is one of the only things that I would not give up for anything else.”

The band also credits a lot of their success to truly enjoying what they do and a desire to succeed.

“I think it goes back to the show we have for this year,” Sharpsteen said. “Put simply, it’s fun, so we want to really be a part of it, Also, the dedication we have from our members really pushes us a long way. It’s been a couple years since we’ve done so well, and I think that’s a driving factor in our performances. We want to prove that we are a great band, not just to the audience and the judges, but to ourselves and our directors. There is just a really high morale this year, and its pushing us really far.”

The band seems very assured that they will continue their success into this year, and are determined to be one of the best bands of the school’s history.

“I’m extremely confident about the band this year,” Sharpsteen said. “We’ve got what it takes to be great and I’m really proud of what we’ve already done Ever since the 2008 marching show, band kids every year have always said ‘I wish I could have a Conquest of Gold year!’ (That was the incredibly successful show in 2008). This year, though, we’ve set the new standard of Rolla marching shows. We didn’t need to have a ‘Conquest of Gold year’, because we’ve got ourselves a ‘Fuego Latino Year.’”