Championship Marching Band: 'We're Like Family'

The Marching Band kept hoping not to be called.

The way scores and awards are announced at marching band competitions, the lowest score is announced first, then the band who earned it.

Then the next highest score, up to first place. So at the Group 3 Open National Championship on Nov. 13 at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md., the announcer started with 18th place.

Leaders from the 18 bands were at attention on the field, waiting to acknowledge the crowd once their scores were called.

Fifth place went to last year's champion, Rancocas Valley Regional High School. Montville's score still hadn't been called.

Once the second-place score was given to Williamstown High School, "We were bouncing with excitement," Montville field corps drum major Robyn Anderson said. "Everyone had a huge smile on their face."

Anderson said she didn't expect to win at all, and went with the attitude, "We're going to do the best we can and have fun."

Band director Ken Korlishin said he knew from the start the band had great potential.

"We knew at camp that it was a good year," he said. "We just knew: the way they were absorbing information, their attitudes. That's what it's all about."

The 66-member band and color guard with their show "Words that Changed the World" in what the U.S. Scholastic Band Association called the tightest of the weekend's competitions.

The band's senior leaders said they were thrilled to win and that the hours of practices were worth it. They spend much of the fall together—rehearsing, performing at football games and competing.

"We're like family," drumline lieutenant Ryan Skaletsky said.

Ashni Mathew, advocacy captain, said the band has a sense of pride in its work and accomplishments.

The second- through fifth-place Group 3 bands all finished within five-tenths of a point of Montville's high score of 97.588. Those bands were Williamstown High School from Williamstown, N.J., Shawnee High School from Medford, N.J., Susquehanna Township High School from Harrisburg, Pa., and, last year's champions, Rancocas Valley Regional High School from Mount Holly, N.J.

Montville also won the Best Visual Performance Caption and the Esprit de Corps Award for the group, an award based on the U.S. Marine Corps values of pride, professionalism and patriotism.

"Words That Changed the World" features recordings of speeches by Franklin Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr.