In my most recent post to this webspace, I write of how I got into band. I note that I grew to love it, a love I think clear from the several efforts I’ve made to remain involved with it. But it was not a linear thing, and there have been times I’ve not been very pleased with how things went, even in that part of my life when being a band nerd was more central to my self-concept than it has since become. (It’s still there, but it’s far from the biggest or most forward part of it.)

I’ve noted, I think, that I was in marching band in high school. Between my freshman and sophomore years, for reasons I am not going to get into here but which are at least partly matters of public record, the high school I attended found itself with a new head band director. Said band director made a number of changes to how things were done in the band program, and many of them were good, although my arrogant little shit of a self pushed back against a number of them. (Then, as now, change for the sake of change was not something I appreciated, and I saw the changes taking place as being in that line. I was wrong, as I realized later, but I was still an ass who deserved a lot worse than I got.) Rather than being a time and space to goof off and act out, band began to be something to take seriously and take some pride in, and from what I remember, there were more than a few in the program who did just that. (Some, of course, had already been doing so.)

Consequently, when Bandtober came around, the band was ready to go. We did a couple preliminary contests, doing better than we had expected to do in each of them, so that when UIL Region Marching Contest was set to happen, we felt ready for it. And on the morning of that contest, despite overcast skies, we assembled at the high school early on, ran our show one more time, then checked our equipment and uniforms and loaded onto several school buses and a rented truck or two, heading east on Interstate 10 to face the judgment of experienced clinicians, educators, and assessors–a judgment I recall being confident would be much in our favor.

As we drove east, however, the clouds that had been hanging above us began to lay down their burdens. By the time we reached the intersection of Interstate 10 and Loop 1604, we had heard the news: the contest had been postponed due to lightning observed and rain expected to last throughout the day and into the evening. We drove around the awkward cloverleaf that the meeting between the two highways was then–it has since been rebuilt, with construction not complete as I write this, into a massive directional interchange–and started back for home, quiet not in focused anticipation as we had been on the way down, but in stunned disappointment.

It was some days later that the rescheduled contest met, or at least our portion of it. It was not at the originally scheduled site, but at what was then the rival school to the one I attended. (As with many other things, matters have changed since; the schools do not, at this point, compete directly with one another, and they have not for some time.) And the rain that had postponed the contest continued not just for the day, but for several days, so that the field was still wet when we stepped onto it, and we were not the first to compete on it that afternoon. We may, however, have been the worst; people didn’t have all of their materials ready, pieces of instruments fell off and got kicked to the sidelines, and a member of our color guard who would go on to compete in and even to coach Drum Corps International events slipped on a patch of mud and slid across part of the field.

With the performance ended, the lot of us marched sullenly off to the side, clearing the field and the track numbly. The results, when we got them, were much as expected–bad–and it was not easy to make the case in the following weeks that we deserved any consideration, any chance to excel. Because that’s one of the things about marching bands that those outside them do not often realize: there’s really not a next chance this season. There are preliminary contests, invitationals and the like, that matter because they offer practice and assessment, but at each stage of the real contest–region, area, and state where I was and am–there is one chance to make it, eight minutes of playing time and sharply limited time to get onto and off of the field before and after. There’s always next season, sure, but in each year, it’s one and done–unless you do well enough to move ahead, which is never a given.

That year, we missed our chance. That year, we had tried and faltered. That year, we had put more focused effort into a few weeks than we had exerted the full year before, and we ended up doing worse than previously. It was the kind of thing that, had we not just had the upheaval in the program that we had had–and to which I and others responded poorly in more than one way–might well have resulted in some changes to the faculty. As it was, there was a lot of doing to make sure we didn’t lose more than a contest; in more recent years, a program cut might have been in the offering, but even then, the performance made it hard to argue for additional funds to support the program.

But there was a next year, and in that year, despite some other challenges away from the marching field, we did better. We did much better. And about that, I might well write another time.

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