Marching Band Wins State for the 13th Consecutive Year

GHS Marching band won their 14th state title (13th consecutive) last Saturday at the University Whitewater.

They scored a 91.8625, their highest since 2015 when they scored a 91.2, and they also won all four caption awards: percussion, musical, exhilaration (dancers/colorguard), and visual.

“What makes this show special is how mostly everyone is so motivated to do better and make the show better,” senior Dani Hamilton said.

The band’s show is called Suspensions and is roughly around 7 minutes long.

“I feel like the show gave out certain emotions. First movement is upbeat, second movement is calming, third movement is aggressive and aggravated,” senior Ryan Steffen said. “It is balanced between woodwinds, brass and percussion. There wasn’t too much of everything.”

Leading up to state week can be pretty stressful for most people.

“One challenge is that people start to get really stressed that week and become short with each other,” junior Margaret Shaughnessy said.

Speaking of challenges, there are many difficulties when rehearsing.

“One thing that makes the show so difficult is that we add body movements, and it is very hard to make sure everyone is doing the exact same thing,” junior drum major Tyler Wrightsman said.

When rehearsing, not only big improvements are being made, but smaller ones as well.

“This show is special because of how much attention to detail we are putting into it. Rather than making the general show improved, we are adding and fixing small details,” Wrightsman said.

Last year the band only won three out of the four caption awards, losing the percussion caption, but this year the band won it back.

“I feel like we worked a lot harder to get out percussion caption back since we lost it last year. This show inspired us to do better,” Steffen said.

When the band first got to Whitewater it started to slowly rain down, which caused the leaders to start to think of the best was to do the show inside, luckily by the time the band went on to perform, the rain started to die down.

“This state was different from the rest because we had the chance of performing inside. Thankfully we did not have to do that,” Hamilton said.

The band had the opportunity to work with consultant Dr. Ward Miller, who judged one of the band’s competitions.

“Dr. Miller really helped the music in the show and it sounded so much better and it impacted the whole show,” sophomore Julia Mayer said.

GHS band members all experienced different, but similar, emotions that day.

“It was amazing. Last year was my first year and it was so surreal and the energy everyone had, made it so much better,” Mayer said.

Seniors had the most emotional day since it was their last state performance.

“I’ll remember the memories I made with my friends and the performance itself,” senior Danica Basta said.

GHS seniors band members will always remember their band experience.

“I’ll remember the friendships I made with people and the opportunity I had to show off what we can do,” senior Brooke Kais said.