On September 30th the Hidden Valley Marching Band went to a competition that took place at William Fleming. In this competition, marching bands from all over the state of Virginia met at William Fleming to show off their skills to a group of judges. The significance of this competition was to perform and it wasn’t just music that they were judged on, judges also looked to visual effects such as the flag corps and the marching bands’ formation.
Student Directors are also an important part of the marching band because the music teacher isn’t the one directing, as there are two student directors that lead the band. Aliza Harner (11) is one of the student directors for our marching band. When asked to what exactly a student director is she responded, “It’s exactly what one thinks, it’s someone who’s helping the senior director lead the band because of how big it is, some band members can’t see the senior one so that’s where I come in and I help her with the band. It’s like they get half and I get the other half.”
Because they’re leading the band, one would think that they have some form of a weight on their shoulders. When asked if they felt like there was a bigger form of responsibility they had to deal with Aliza responded, “I feel like there was because I had to be in sync with the senior director and we had to be on time, almost perfect, and if one messed up it could go really bad.”
When asked about the results of the competition Aliza responded, “I think we did really well. It was one of our better performances that we’ve done, but competition wise we could’ve done better, but we can use it as a learning experience and just sharpen up on what they told us we needed to work on.”