The Last Week of the Ferndale Golden Eagle Marching Season

It’s been a long, but quick last few weeks in marching band land. We’ve had a bunch of rehearsals, some of them raining of course, and two more competitions. It’s our last week leading up to state finals – the last performance.

Getting through this last few weeks seems like a long haul during the time, but as each week goes by you think, “How are we almost done? Don’t we need about four more weeks of rehearsal until we’re ready for finals?” At this point of the season we’ve gotten over the hump that is the beginning of October, when everybody is getting tired. Once you can see the finish line everybody suddenly seems to get a second wind.

The last two competitions have been at Clarkston High School and at Lakeland High School in White Lake. At both competitions we did really well. We score the highest in all captions (best music, best marching, and best general effect) and placed first in both competitions. At the last show I believe we scored the highest we ever have before finals.

These last few shows determine our average score for the placements bands are in before they go to finals. The Michigan Competition Bands Association takes the top two scores from each band and averages them. The top 12 bands in each flight get to perform in finals. This year we have the highest number, and by three points!

This past Saturday is usually the most stressful of all the shows. You want your score to constantly be going up each week and we’ve had years where it has gone down at the last competition before finals. That is never good for the psyche of the staff and students! But thankfully that didn’t happen this year – we gained about four points from the week before.

On the Sunday before finals, everybody is glued to their computers as the drawing for performance order takes place in the afternoon. It literally is a bunch of band directors sitting around pulling pieces of paper out of a box. It’s nothing exciting, but it’s always scary to see where your band will end up.

MCBA does not put bands in order according to their average scores coming to finals, which is what every other marching organization does. Instead they divide the groups into two – the top half and the bottom half. So bands are drawn in groups of six to determine performance order. Since we had the top score, we were in the top half. We could have been pulled to perform anywhere from sixth to the very last. This year we were fortunate to be second-to-last.

I find this system very unfair for groups that end up right in the middle. For example, you could have a group be in seventh place, putting them in the bottom half that has the potential to come out in fifth or sixth place.  But if that band goes on first of the entire show, the bands that it could be comparable to might not go on until eleventh or twelve, not putting them on a very even playing field. Of course part of the judge’s job is to keep them all in comparison, but it just doesn’t seem right to me. We’ve been really lucky, but we’ve had friends of ours not be so lucky. 

Anyway, here we are…the last week of band. We have a rehearsal tonight (Halloween), and have a special treat for the kids. We’ll have our Wednesday rehearsal, a special Friday rehearsal at a soccer dome, and Saturday before the show. Wish us luck in our final preparations. The next time you hear from me we will have finished our season!

When you hear the police going through town on Saturday, know it’s our band, your band, heading to state finals to represent Ferndale. Join the parade!