Photo courtesy of Tracy Miller
Bright lights. Blaring horns. Banging drums. A figure in a red-and-white-striped hat. Marching Band performs their Dr. Seuss-themed show, “Oh, The Places You’ll Go!” at Ledford High School. The judges give them a Superior, a score between 80 and 100 percent proficiency. In each subsequent competition, the band brings home a Superior. Finally, the band wins its last Superior on Nov. 4 2017, marking its first All-Superior season in four years and in band director Brett Cox’s tenure.
“I remember we marched up to the field once they revealed it on the board and everyone was screaming,” said junior Marcus Jackson, who portrayed The Cat In The Hat in a voiceover narration of the Seuss book for the show. “This is our first [All-Superior season] in four years; it was really long overdue.”
Junior Clayton Hinson, an Assistant Drum Major, feels the same way.
“It means a whole lot to me, it means a whole lot to the band—the sense of pride that we have for being able to show off how great we are and doing the best we could possibly do,” Hinson said.
The band has been striving for this goal since it won its last All-Superior season in 2013. Each year, it has increased in determination and quality of performance. This progress culminated in this year’s band, whose success Cox credits to two factors.
“One, this leadership team has been with me for four years, so they’re the first group that’s really grasped onto what my personality is, the kind of leadership that I want out of my students and the kind of culture to get set,” Cox said. “They implemented that well. They led well. They upheld the culture that I wanted to promote.”
The second factor is the band’s concept, inspired by Dr. Seuss’ “Oh, The Places You’ll Go!”
“Our generation is really nostalgic—the millennial generation, that is—and to think back and connect with something from your childhood resonates with us, so I think the show resonated with the students,” Cox said. “They liked the music, and they got behind it.”
Senior Macie Marsh, a Drum Major, credits the band’s success to another factor.
“We’ve had this director for four years,” Marsh said. “We’ve had him for a longer period of time, so we know his work ethic and we were able to match our work ethics, but past bands didn’t have that same ethic.”
This year held particular significance to Cox.
“I didn’t tell the kids this, but in my mind, with the show that I had planned and the leadership that I had, I knew that if any year we were going to do it, it was going to be this year, and in my mind it was All-Superior or bust,” Cox said.
Having fallen short in previous years, Marching Band was hungry for an All-Superior season.
“No one in our band had ever experienced getting All-Superior before, so we kind of had a drought—four years of not getting one—so it meant a lot to everyone in the group to get that Superior for our seniors,” Hinson said. “I think that determination and that dedication made it matter a lot more to everyone.”
Last year’s band failed to earn an All-Superior season by a hair. In the first competition, the band scored a 78.9, just below the minimum 80 points required for a Superior. Every other competition that season earned a Superior. Cox says the band failed to earn that Superior because it had not fully learned the show.
“I think this group bought into the music, they practiced on their own more and they learned the show quicker, and that was the number one thing,” Cox said. “We had the whole show, before we went to the first competition, on the field and ready to go from start to finish.”
Winning a Superior in the first competition relieved pressure and restored confidence for the band.
“We were really nervous at first because we’d been practicing a lot, and our first competition was nerve-racking,” junior Meredith Clouse said. “[In] our first competition, we got a Superior, and we knew from there that it would keep going.”
This, however, was not the greatest challenge in store for Marching Band.
“The number one obstacle of the year was the second competition at Wakefield High School,” Cox said. “It was a rainy day, and we were really excited about how well we did at Ledford the week before, so we show up to Wakefield, and the weather kind of gets in our heads a little bit. We go out there and we’re about to march on the field and it just starts to downpour on us. The weather got in the kids’ heads, and we performed like it. We still came out with a Superior, but we knew that it wasn’t our best run. We come off the field and it’s dead quiet, and the students know that they didn’t put their all into it. They had a choice when they came off that field that day: they could mope around about it and be sad, or they could use it as fuel for the next one; and they chose the second.”
Indeed, Marching Band managed to bring home an All-Superior for the eighth time since 2000. Having achieved a milestone in band history, Cox and his students believe this trend will continue.
“I think that with this season, we have a new standard of excellence where we’re expected to be every year, so I think that we’re going to do better,” junior Sam Shi said.
Cox hopes that he and his creative staff continue to produce high-quality shows that motivate his students. However, he hopes band members give full effort not because of their opinion of the show, but because of Marching Band’s high standard of excellence.
“I hope that the underclassmen don’t have this sense that this was a one-time thing,” Cox said. “It’s a one-time thing for now. Hopefully, this builds a culture of excellence and it becomes something that is a regular occurrence.”
– By Garrison Parrish
