Homecoming Week and Johnson

Homecoming week is usually just about as crazy as it gets at Kennedy High School (this excludes the week of AP exams). On Wednesday there is the parade, Friday night is the football game with the crowing of king and queen, and finally on Saturday night is the much anticipated dance. Oh yea, and I cannot forget the pep assembly were all the king and queen candidates are announced. It couldn’t be a much busier week for most people but if you are in the marching band, it definitely gets a lot busier. On Wednesday night we marched in the parade. This doesn’t seem like that big of a time commitment right there but considering we had to be there at 5 o’clock and weren’t allowed to leave until about 6:30, it definitely took up a good chunk of time. After we marched through the streets around Kennedy we went to the back of the school where the student government was in charge of lighting a huge bonfire. We, of course, played through the fight song before being dismissed. Before the parade we had a flute sectional to get us ready for our upcoming performance we had scheduled for that Saturday. It might sound like I am complaining as I write all this, but I can honestly say that I love marching band.

The next night, Thursday night, we had marching band practice as usual and we were able to add some more sets to movement number 3, our last movement. For those of you not in marching band, sets are our positions on the field that we must learn in order to be able to make our different formations. Everybody’s sets are different because they will take them to different places on the field, which makes it a sort of memorization process. It is important that everyone on the field know their sets because if they don’t they will just be wandering aimlessly on the field (unfortunately this has happened to me several times before). I had to come late to practice because I had a cross country meet but luckily all the other flutes were able to help me catch up on where I was supposed to be.

Friday night we had the football game against Xavier which I was really looking forward to. We were ahead at halftime but unfortunately they creamed us in the second half of the game. For marching band we played pregame, which is just marching onto the field and playing the Star Spangled Banner and the Fight Song. Unfortunately, all of us band people had to miss the crowing of the king and queen as usual but we soon figured out who they were from the student section. Then, at halftime, we performed our show. We were only able to march about ¾ of it but we played the entire show. It went pretty well for still being the beginning of the season. The end didn’t go as good as it could have but we have the Xavier student section to thank partly for that. At the beginning of our performance, the loud speaker made an announcement to ask for the crowd to be quiet for a short time. The Kennedy student section was quieter than usual which we can be thankful for. The Xavier student section was another story. Either they didn’t understand English or simply wanted to be rude because during the second half of our performance they started to have a cheering contest. Xavier has always gotten the rep of being the “nice catholic school” where all the kids are respectable and well behaved. I am here to tell you that is about as far from the truth as could be possible. Nevertheless, our show ended well and we were pumped for our competition the next day.

On Saturday we had to be up at the school to depart for Johnson, Iowa at 6:30. The drive is about 2 hours and we needed to make sure we were there in plenty of time for our performance. The bus ride is usually one of the more fun parts but most of us were too tired to have much excitement. My friends and I were on the drum line bus because by the time we signed up for buses it was the only one that had enough seats for us all to be together. The reason this bus is usually a last resort for people is because the drum line insists on pulling out their pads and drum sticks and practicing their music the ENTIRE bus ride. It does not matter if it is a 2 hour bus ride or 5 hour bus ride, they will practice the entire time. Despite the drum line, the bus ride ended up being pretty fun. When we got there we got into our uniforms immediately and warmed up for our performance. Since it is early in the season, it was not a scored performance. Instead the judges just gave us comments and ways to improve our show. Our show went well for being our first actual performance. When we were done we headed straight home so that everyone would have time to get ready for Homecoming.