Yesterday, David and I went with Lisa and the FHS band to Owasso to a marching contest.  We had to be at the high school at 8:30 AM.  Owasso is just north of Tulsa, so it took about two hours to get there on the buses.  As soon as we arrived in Owasso, we unloaded the equipment trucks and served lunch (pizza) to the students.

Next, we helped students get their uniforms.  It was really hot, so I know the kids were VERY hot in the uniforms!  We kept giving them water to keep them hydrated.  After getting into uniforms we went to the “warm-up” area (pun not intended).  Here you can see students getting ready to perform:

 

They headed to the stadium to perform at 2:30 PM.

This is one of the most prestigious marching contests in the country, and we saw some pretty awesome bands.  Fayetteville’s band did a great job of performing in the afternoon and made the finals competition for the evening.  There were 20 bands in the competition, and 12 bands made the finals.  We knew going into the evening performance that we were in the top six.  The top six bands drew numbers for the order in which they would perform in the evening, and Fayetteville drew the “best” position of perfoming last.  This meant that they had a lot of time to rest, eat dinner, and watch some of the bands perform before getting back into their uniforms.  Fortunately, by this time (around 8 PM) it was much cooler.  They did even better in the evening performance and placed 5th in the competition.  This might not sound that great, but if you could see the bands with whom they were competing, you’d be pretty impressed.  Two years ago when FHS last attended this competition, they placed 9th, and two years before that (the first time they were in this competition) they did not even place in the top 12 that got to perform in the finals.  So you can see that they have come a long way in the past four years.

More pictures…

Serving dinner:

Pictures from the evening performance:

 

Kelly Butterweck, Lisa and Kailey Miller with the trophy:

By the time we loaded the buses to head back to Fayetteville, it was midnight.  Therefore, it was around 2:00 AM when we arrived at FHS, and we all had to help unload the equipment.  I dropped into bed this morning at 3:00 AM.  We had a great time, but what a day!