On Oct. 9, at Baker University, the high school marching band competed at the Baker Marching Festival, and won.

“As soon as I heard De Soto called second place, I could not believe it. I know other people around me couldn’t believe it. We couldn’t believe our ears. We couldn’t believe our eyes, either, when we were handed the trophy. When we reacted, it was one of the best feelings in the world. We all stormed the field, and Drew Fabrizius held up the trophy in the middle of all of us. We’re all jumping on him, we’re all screaming and having a great time. This continued for about 10 minutes straight until someone shouted, ‘Alright, picture time! Seniors upfront!’ We all took pictures after storming the track, and on the bus ride back to the high school, we were all celebrating, listening to music, and basking in our success. Overall, that celebration was one of the best times of my life so far. It was a feeling indescribable to anyone other than the members of the band who were there,” Logan Smoot, trumpet player, 12, said.

According to band members it was an out of body, surreal experience and a very welcome one at that. They are astonished that they were able to beat DeSoto. Normally it wouldn’t be a big deal, but the band has been after DeSoto for years. To break DeSoto’s eight year winning streak was huge for the marching band. 

“You don’t think it actually happens, to break a school’s eight year long winning streak. And you’re just like, we won and, I personally couldn’t stop smiling on the way back home because it was, it was great. I wasn’t expecting to win at all because DeSoto is extremely good. But we did and shocked,” said Liz Wood, 10. 

Despite this great outcome the band still have more marching competitions to come, and still need to improve.

“We should improve the things because everyone, it tends to happen after any type of festival. We always just think, wow, we did so bad and stuff like that. So, just learning on the things that we think that we messed up on and improving on that. And yeah, I guess just things to work on so, we don’t make the same mistakes because our rehearsals go really well. And then whenever we get to it afterwards, everyone just like, kind of sketchy and worried but then we do well. The band still has to practice to perfect their marching technique for the marching competitions to come,” said Wood. 

The band will compete again Oct. 23 at the Spring Hill Marching festival and will perform one final time at the Oct. 25 football game.