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After about 10 minutes of playing her trumpet, lifting her toes, keeping an eye on the drum major, squaring her shoulders, remembering the music and making sure she’s in formation, Sarah Sites won’t get any milk.
After marching bands perform at the Indiana State School Music Association State Marching Band Finals, it’s tradition for students to exit the field and drink a free carton of milk. It’s mirrored after the Indianapolis 500, which ends with a ceremonial bottle of milk for the winner.
But because Snider High School has the coveted last performance time of the competition, the students won’t get to enjoy a boost of calcium after their performance. After they finish, band members will immediately line up on the field to get ready for their class awards ceremony.
Snider is among 40 high school bands that will compete at the state marching band finals Saturday at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis. Eight northeast Indiana bands made the cut based on their performances at the semistate competition last weekend.
Allen County has the most bands represented, with five. Heritage, Concordia Lutheran, Woodlan, Homestead, DeKalb, Adams Central and Norwell high schools will join Snider in vying for a state title.
Despite Sites’ disappointment over the milk, Snider band director Kevin Klee thinks the band is in a good position. It’s conventional wisdom in marching band circles that being the last band of the evening to perform puts a school at an advantage.
Judges tend to be more conservative with their scoring at the beginning of the competition, in case they are more impressed by a later band, Klee said. If they give the first band out a high score, it’s harder to award more points later to better-performing bands, he said.
Based on the size of their high schools, the bands are divided into four classes. Four state titles will be awarded Saturday.
Snider is the last band to perform in both Class A and the competition. Adams Central is the last band to perform in Class D.
Snider did not qualify for state finals last year, so this will be the first time the band will perform in Lucas Oil Stadium. Klee is looking forward to the new stadium’s supposedly better acoustics, since the RCA Dome was renowned for being a difficult space to perform because the sound bounced all around.
The 108-member Mighty Panther Marching Band spent all week fixing visual and musical weaknesses, practicing in Snider’s parking lot to the sound of a metronome blaring from a loudspeaker.
“This is really one of my smaller bands that I’ve had since I’ve been at Snider. They’re extremely hard working,” Klee said. “I have been told that the band sounds better; that overall, even though we have fewer horns, that they are playing better and more evenly and with a better sound. I’m not sure I believe that, but that’s what I’ve been told.”
Because the senior class was smaller this year, Klee instituted leadership training for the upperclassmen, in hopes they would have a better foundation for guiding the younger students.
“I think it’s important because the younger kids look up to the seniors and juniors more than they look up to the staff members,” Sites said. “I think they listen to the kids more than they listen to the adults, because they feel more like them.”
Junior Xavier Shaw, 16, said the students are more enthusiastic about the show this year than in previous years.
Shaw, who plays the quads, said the drumline will end its breaks early to get back to practicing.
Shaw is not as upset about the milk as Sites, sharing Klee’s thoughts on being the last band of the night to perform.
“The judges have seen all the other things, and it’s like you get the chance to put everything out there and be the last thing they see before they put down a number and really have an imprint on how they felt your show was compared to everybody else,” Shaw said.
