The Fort Osage band ended their season on Oct. 23 in Macon with a 1st Place finish. They had a total of four competitions performing at Blue Springs, Blue Springs South, Lee’s Summit North, and Macon.  

They placed 7th place out of 12 on their very first competition in Blue Springs. In their performance at Lee’s Summit North, they placed second in their division and fourth overall and placed a score of 79.625. At the KC Championships at Blue Springs South, they took 7th place. At the Macon competition, they gained the highest score with an 85.73. Director of Bands Ms. Erica Gregory believed that the band has greatly improved since their first competition.

“The band has improved exponentially since our first competition,” Ms. Gregory said in an email. “The ways that you can see are in our form development, visual and musical impacts, balance and blend of the music. They are also more confident in what they are doing and have a better understanding of how to put things together without the staff having to break down every step.”

The show was titled “To Dream.” The band performed four songs. “The featured songs were named “Sweet Dreams are Made of These,” “A Million Dreams,” “Beautiful Dreams,” and “Requiem for a Dream.” Freshman Haley Gregory feels that when they performed, she was excited and became less anxious. 

“Before performing, it  was very nerve racking,” Haley Gregory said. “But when we got on the field, we were just ready and set, and all of the stress kind of went away.” 

Along with the first place finish in Macon the band earned Outstanding rankings in the Auxiliary, Music, Visual and Effect categories. Freshman Justin Cox believes that there were improvements to be made, but they still performed well.

“I do think we could’ve done better, but we can always do better and make improvements,” Cox said. “But overall, I still think our performance was pretty great.”

Along with the competitions, the 96 member marching band performs at every home football game. Ms. Gregory enjoyed witnessing the band’s extraordinary progression since their first performance and believes that their final performance was their strongest.

“I could not be more proud of how they have progressed,” Ms. Gregory stated in an email. “It was a joy to watch them and see them reap the benefits from all the hard work they put in. Their strongest performance was at Macon on Oct. 23. Everything finally locked into place. It was a bittersweet ending to the season. Sweet because it all finally fell into place, bitter because I think one more week and it would have been even better.”

They started practicing for performances July 25th, which was the start of band camp.

Band practices continued during the school year within the class period and before and after school hours.