The football season for Eleanor Roosevelt High School has just ended, which means it is time for the Mustang Marching band to focus on their competitive parade marching and field marching instead of performing at football games.

In a competitive parade marching, a band marches down the street in the strict formation and judges deduct points every time they see a visual mistake such as being out of formation. There are also scoring for music, color guards, and drum majors. Due to there being a lot of categories of judging and it being very simple to lose points, parade marching needs more discipline than any other activities in order to win. The game of parade marching is that one that does the simple thing the best as a group wins. This means smallest mistakes can affect the score and placements.

The band has been working hard since July for the success of our marching band program and they are anticipating for much better results than last year, both visually and musically. They are trying their hardest to both sound and look clean to win the competition.

Ethan Shiginaka, a four year marching band member, says “I think we’re very prepared for what’s coming, especially with all the practice we do every week.”

Ethan says that our band is well prepared for the upcoming parade competition this week.

Ian Cho, parade drum major of the band, says “I think band is doing really great this year, so I think our first parade competition is going to be very successful.”

Ian says that marching band will bring great results back to us from their very first parade competition.

All marching band members are working very hard for their first competition this week, hoping  for great results that would reflect their effort and time spent on practicing.