Pella Competition

....When we left Linn Mar (high school in Marion, IA) , we traveled for over 2 hours to Pella, IA. We watched Transformers 2 on the way. Now any movie we watch has to be pre-approved by the band directors for appropriate content and language. I'm not sure how the Transformers 2 is more appropriate than the Hunger Games, however nobody complained, it was a good movie.

When we got to Pella, we stopped at the local Pizza Ranch and ate supper at about 6:30. They had been preparing since about 3:00 for us and it took less than 20 minutes for us to demolish all of the food they had waiting for us in the separate room. We had to go out into the public area in order to get more food. The other customers were shocked to see the swarms of kids coming from the other wing. We were asked how we managed to fit everyone in the back room. When we all descended on the ice cream machine, there were two little girls that were waiting in our line for the ice cream machine. They seemed a little overwhelmed, so we let them cut in line and helped them get their ice cream.

After we cleaned out the restaurant, we loaded up on the buses and headed to Pella High School and got the trailer unloaded. It was nice not having to constantly be going and going; we had an hour to kill before we had to perform. When the hour was up, we had to push up all of the pit equipment because their trailer to help transport the equipment was only 7'x 10' large and it had no ramp. It would have been more work than it was worth trying to get it onto the trailer. We had to wait until the band got there to enter the field.

I don’t know if we just were more focused this week then we were last week, but we got A LOT better over the week. We all even improved in between shows; our confidence and the overall percentage of people actually playing rose, our dynamics improved immensely, and our color guard had some timing issues at Linn-mar but came back to win best color guard at Pella!! Great job girls!!!! Once they learn all of their drill ( the last of which I was told was taught only at the end of this week, which is a very tough turnaround), Kennedy's color guard is actually one of the best ones in the area. It is not uncommon for us to place about in the middle of the bands, of not slightly below yet win the overall best color guard. Our show still has much to work on for sure, but overall we are doing very well. We got second out of three in the division 4A marching bands. Dowling Catholic got first, which wasn't surprising; they are a large private catholic school in central Iowa whose students have to audition to make their rather large marching band.

After we loaded up the trailer, we headed home, and I fell asleep, and my friends had perhaps too much fun trying to wake up she-who-sleeps-through-tornado-sirens when we got to school at 1:30 am. Once they got me up, we joined everyone who unloaded the trailer for the last time this weekend, and headed home to try to get some sleep.