Sheridan’s first year of fall marching band

By MORGAN CIAMBELLA & JUPITER SEATS
Sheridan High School Students

Ciambella

Seats

Editor’s note: The Sheridan Student Column is brought to readers by Sheridan High School’s Accelerated English 9 class, taught by Ellie Arrowood.

This is Sheridan High School’s first year of fall marching band. In previous years, we’ve done marching band during the summers, marching in parades on the Fourth of July, performing at the State Fair, and going to competitions. Now, we march at football games, making shapes that resemble our school’s initials, SHS.

I, Morgan Ciambella, am No. 7 in our positions, and I play the clarinet. So far, this year has been a good way to experiment with marching band.

On the other hand and perspective, I, Maleah Seats, also known as Jupiter, am No. 26 in the positions and am usually located directly on the 50-yard mark of the football field. I play Percussion, and am marching Snare this year. I believe if more people try to show up, we will actually be able to make marching band fun again.

I, Morgan, remember first joining band in seventh grade. A lot of my friends were in band, and I’ve always loved music. At the start of that year, I became friends with Jupiter. Jupiter and I grew close really quickly, and they spoke about marching band a lot. I wanted to learn what marching was like, so I’m happy I got to experience it.

As for me, Jupiter, I joined as soon as I could. I had started drum lessons about a year beforehand, so I already had some experience going in. When I was going into the seventh grade, I was invited into the high school marching band. After I got back to school, that’s all I talked about for months. I shared so many memories with my friends about everything that happened.

Throughout this year, we’ve performed pre-game at three football games, and more soon. Trying to learn with so little time and marching “veterans” has been tricky. We’ve been practicing in the high school gyms. Many marchers have gotten frustrated with this because there are no direct spots to look off, meaning it’s more common than not that you have to take a guess at where you’ll be located that day. Luckily, we’ve started to get a good feel for where our spots are, so you only ever move about a few inches on or off yesterday’s spot. When we do use the football field after school, it’s much easier to know where exactly we’re expected to be.

Putting all of that aside, though, marching band has been pretty fun. We’ve learned new songs and pieces, learned to get used to marching a lot, and are now one step closer to being able to march the halftime shows!

We hope to gain more marchers and supporters for our marching band so we can eventually march in ISSMA contests. By going to these contests, it could help our school become more well-known and would hopefully encourage more people to come and join our band program.

We are a very welcoming community and always enjoy having new people come along.