Tournament Season

Band tournament season is finally over (though we just found out that they will be performing their field show one more time on December 12, at the All-Star High School Football Game).

It started off with our Tournament of Bands on November 8...this is the band booster club's main fundraiser so most of us parents worked all day/evening, preparing food to be sold, working in the food concession or ticket booth or program booth or being hosts to the 16 bands who participated or acted as security or hosted the judges and tabulated the scores. Hundreds of parents were involved and the event was a major success. The weather was beautiful and we had a turnout of 3000+ spectators plus 1,600 band students participating.

The highlight of the evening was having the kids give a special performance for us at the end of the event, since most of the parents were working and didn't get to see them perform. Although it wasn't the full field show, they played the music for us and they were great. We also found out that the band scored better than their arch-rival Moanalua!

It was a long day and night (dropped Ryan off at 11:45 for his tuba sectional and the band practiced from 1 pm, didn't perform until almost 10 pm) and we didn't get home until after 1 am.

The next tournament was the Meadow Gold University of Hawaii Band Festival at Aloha Stadium the following Monday. Again they did a fantastic job, with the Kamehameha Dance Company also part of the show and the props were amazing - the pictures changed three times during the show, with the music. Didn't get many good pictures since I was videotaping.

When the props were wheeled onto the field, someone behind us said, "Well, everybody else may as well go home already," meaning that now that Kamehameha was in the house, no one else can compare! The show was very impressive.

The final tournament was last night at Mililani High School. It poured rain the night before as well as during the day, so we weren't sure whether they would wear their "full dress" or formal uniforms or their casual uniforms (Mamo Howell aloha shirts with blue school pants). When we got there, the field was full of puddles and mud. By the time Kamehameha performed near the end of the night (following 12 other bands), the field was just mud.

They added more elements to the show and did such an amazing job...too bad the judges didn't see it. We were all so disappointed at how skewed the judging was; Moanalua won almost all the categories. The Moanalua director came over to our band director later saying that he thought we should have had higher scores.

Oh, well, the mud made it so difficult to perform properly...the kids were slipping and sliding around, some fell. The color guard in some of the other school's had choreography that required them to lie down and roll around in the mud! No problem if it's astroturf or dry grass, but MUD! OMG, the audience all gasped when they did that, but we also applauded extra for them. One kid in some other band thought he was being funny and went out of formation to jump around the big puddle in the middle of the field...he got booed.

Got my picture of the all the tubas at the end.

2008-2009 Tuba Line, L-R: Sproles, Ryan, Shane, Wichimai, Mano, Chase and Ian.

Took home 10 kids' white uniform pants to wash because they were covered with Mililani mud. Tried two different types of stain remover and soaked/washed them twice, but some of the stains would not come out. Need to keep trying. Got Ryan brand new white marching shoes for tournament season...ruined!

Well, we get a short rest until Christmas concerts at the beginning of December...