Down But Not Out at DeKalb

This week, Spirit of Woodlan had Friday night off from football but did practice after school as usual. Saturday morning, September 16th, practice again began at 8am. The band had a productive morning practice and got a lot of work done on their show. They stopped for lunch around 11:30am and continued with practice after lunch. They were served a lunch of pulled pork, pasta salad, potato salad, veggies, chips, cookies, and brownies. After their afternoon practice, they boarded their buses and headed for DeKalb High School for the Baron Brigade Invitational.

Saturday morning practice

Lunchtime!

When they arrived at DeKalb, they had lots of extra time before they had to be dressed and ready for warmup, so they did what they love to do and played a game of Ninja. The students always seem to enjoy this game. We were all grateful for beautiful weather and a great day to compete.

After they got dressed, I asked who wanted to be on the blog, and they all kept me busy taking their pictures!

The flute section for Saturday: Myra was representing!!!

Spirit of Woodlan took the field at 6:30pm and had a really great performance. This week, they marched with 5 holes, which really hurt their scores. They made great improvements over last week. The guard worked extra hard this week and put in extra hours beyond the normal practice times, and their efforts showed in their performance. They were proud of their improvements over last week. In general, most of the students talked about it being a much better performance than the previous week.

The students had several hours to sit together in the stands and watch the performances of bands in Classes C, B, and A. It was a beautiful night and the students enjoyed spending time together in the stands.

At the awards ceremony, Adams Central Squadron of Sound took first place, Spirit of Triton came in second, and Spirit of Woodlan received third place. This was, of course, disappointing for the students, who had hoped their improvements this week would improve their results at the awards ceremony. Hard lessons are being learned with these disappointing outcomes, and students will return to practice this week to hopefully work hard at making necessary adjustments to their performances.

This upcoming weekend, the students will celebrate Woodlan’s Homecoming on Friday night and march in the Homecoming Parade through Woodburn as well as perform at half-time. They will also participate in the Pancake & Sausage Breakfast on Saturday, followed by the annual mattress fundraiser. There will be no competitions this weekend, so the band will have two weeks of practices to work on their show before competing again at the ISSMA Invitational at Homestead on September 30th. Please continue to support these awesome students and surround them with positivity and encouragement!