The Final Practice (Sort of)

As I've mentioned on a couple of occasions on this blog, both of my children are in marching band at their school. Their season is winding down, and last night was what for my wife and myself--after just two short years involved in the marching band--has become our favorite night of the year. It's the night of the final practice before state competition (though this year that's actually a lie--the band practices again this afternoon), and the band does several things to mark the occasion. First, it's "Poster Night": the family of each band member creates a poster for that child and then all 90 or so of them are hung in the hallways outside of the band room while the students practice. The kids come back into the building after practice and here are all of these photos and words of encouragement. It's really neat to see the kids going from poster to poster and laughing about the photos and the encouraging words and the inside jokes written on the posters.

But that's not the real fun. The real fun happens just before that. Each night, at the end of practice, the band finishes the night by doing a complete run through of the entire show. On this final night, though, they actually do the run through three different times. The first time they do a standard run through. After that, though, the seniors leave the field and run up into the press box and watch the rest of the band perform without them. I'm not sure, but I THINK this was originally done for two purposes: 1) To let the seniors see the show themselves, at least one time, and 2) To reveal what a hole there will be in the band without the seniors the following year. Regardless of what the original intent was, though, the show has devolved to the point that it's now just a chance for these bandies to be the clowns that they are, and to rebel a little from the rigid formality they've been practicing for four months now. In any event, it's funny stuff.

Following that run through, the opposite happens: The underclassmen all go up into the stands, and the seniors go out on the field alone and try to do the show all by themselves. It's also funny to watch 10 kids trying to do what almost 100 were designed to do, and again, no one is taking it too seriously.

Here's video of last night's 2nd and 3rd run throughs:



(I can't see the video.)



(I can't see the video.)