A big part of the “Friday Night Lights” of high school football experience is the halftime performance of the marching band, no matter what school you attend. For most spectators, watching the band at halftime is when they believe all their work and effort is displayed. Yet, In fact, it is at their marching competitions, held throughout the fall season, that marching bands truly shine and display their full capabilities. To prepare for this, Pleasant Grove High School hosted its annual PG Marching Invitational this past Saturday for bands from across the ArkLaTex.
With nearly 20 schools scheduled– but two having to drop the invitation at the last minute– it takes weeks’ worth of preparation from band directors, students, and band booster groups to get everyone there. The PG Band Boosters group worked effortlessly to schedule this date for all of the schools. Hooks High School’s marching band even had its homecoming dance the night of the competition. Yet, through communicating with the band boosters, the group was able to perform —once for the regular competition and a second time as finalists — and still make it back in time for their students to attend their homecoming.
Jay Sutton has been directing the band at Pleasant Grove for four years, but the first invitational hosted by PG was years before he got the job, when he was working with the Redwater High School marching band. Even then, he saw what benefit this invitational had for not just his band, but all of them. “The comments you get from the judges are invaluable,” Mr. Sutton said, “They’re going to tell you everything you need to do to continue to get better and push yourself. When you hear it from somebody else that isn’t your director, you respond to that feedback.”
Out of the fifteen bands that played, Pleasant Grove’s Hawks Marching Band and the Southern Arkansas University Band were not a part of the competition, and out of those that did compete, only eight bands made it to finals: Prairiland High School, Hooks High School, Arkansas High’s Razorback Marching Band, Whitman High School, Queen City High School, Texas High’s Tigers Marching Band, Mineola High School taking home silver, and Redwater’s Dragon Marching Band taking home the gold. This is Redwater’s second consecutive year in a row where they have won first place at this invitational.
Redwater’s performance, called “From The Depths,” consists of music by Justin Timberlake, Imagine Dragons, Dvořák, Hans Zimmer, and Linkin Park. The pieces performed by the band all tie back into themes of personal identity or transformation, which have often been associated with water in mediums besides music. For several of these students, it would be their last time performing at this competition, making the ideas behind the music feel more personal.
Dillon Dabis, the head director of Redwater’s Dragon Marching Band, has directed this band for the past three years, where their band consists of students involved in all sorts of extracurricular activities. “We’ve got a lot of athletes in our band that do sports and things like that outside of their band time,” he explained. “They really dig into that competition aspect of things like this, and they really reach for the highest level whenever they’re competing. It’s really incredible to watch them perform at this level.”
Even for the students who aren’t involved in other extracurriculars, their time spent with band is often filled with resilience and hard work. The night before the invitational, Pleasant Grove High School’s football team played against Sunnyvale High School, with the band travelling alongside them. The band did not return to Texarkana until 2 AM on Saturday and were back at the stadium at 7 AM, in time for the invitational. The Hawks’ Marching band proceeded to stay at the stadium the rest of the day, even until after the competition was over, to help clean up and reorganize from the events of the day. For some students, like Eli Bailey, the busyness is worth it to support his fellow bands. “It kind of gives them time to warm up for more important competitions,” Eli said. “And for our band, it gives us a chance to give a good performance to prep for our competitions too.”
This sentiment seems to be shared by both band students and directors. Arkansas High’s Vincent Flieder, Hooks High’s Belyn Graves, and Prairiland High’s Micah York all agree that this invitational gives their students a chance to improve on their skills thanks to the comments from former-band directors as the judges. Since it is also the first competition of the season, it also gives each band a chance to find what they’re great at and what they can improve on.
“It helps by getting them ready for state and regional competitions, but also works on building our morale,” Graysen Narens explained. “Just getting everybody ready, involved, and making sure everybody knows what they’re doing.” Graysen has been one of the drum majors for Arkansas High’s Razorback band for the past two years and is a six-year baritone saxophone player, on top of being a Varsity Razorback Football player.
Pleasant Grove plans to host another marching invitational next year, with every band that competed Saturday attending this invitational for several years and planning on continuing to do so for the foreseeable future. Though it only acts as the start of the marching competition season, the Pleasant Grove Marching Band competition shows the talent, hard work, and passion behind every band.
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