New Hartford’s marching band marches towards Virtuosity while performing at the Spartan Spectacular home show on September 20th.
There are over one hundred students in the marching band and each and every one of them work extremely hard to put the show together with two 3 hour practices a week, home football games on Friday for the halftime performance and practicing all day on competition days. It’s hard work to perform through an 8 minute performance while playing loud and energetic music or dancing and doing tricks with equipment.
“I think the marching band show this year is really great, it has a lot of good opportunities for students,”Evelyn Karol, a student playing the clarinet in the ensemble said” I also think it has come a long way and is going to be a great memory for all students involved.”
While the Spartan Spectacular is only the 2nd competition this season for the New Hartford marching band, people had high hopes for this show to be successful in competition, and it did just that with New Hartford taking first place with a score of 80.250.
Everyone involved in the marching band, students and staff have worked hard this season to put this show together. The show has come a long way since band camp in August and it still has a long way to go for improvement until the dome performance in October. “My hope for this season is that when we get to and before the dome we will all be proud of what we made of this show, and be ready to be even better next year” Brielle Laliberte, a freshman involved in marching band ensemble said.
“I think we have a solid shot at doing well this competition season,”Zachary Nicotera, a senior and saxophone player involved in marching band said. ““The students and
instructors have been working extremely hard and hopefully we can use that to our advantage”.
On September 13th the New Hartford marching band traveled and competed at their first competition of the season. Although they left with 4th place the students and staff involved have high hopes for future competitions.
“I was surprised that the New Hartford marching band placed 4th in their opening competition, I thought they would have placed higher. However, I know from past years that there is so much growth in the next 8 weeks and that this group has the potential to be very successful in competition this year! I look forward to watching growth happen each week,” Ms Thormahlen, a 9th grade English teacher at Perry Junior High said.
There are multiple judges for competition and Judges typically judge based on music, visual and general effect. Each area is broken down into detailed sub-categories like performance and effect, and scores from specific judges are often averaged.
