Personal Narrative: West Bend West Strengths

It was a cool and crisp night as the clock wound down ‘til halftime at the homecoming game where the Slinger Owls took on the West Bend West Suns. The strong smell of the fresh burgers on the the propane grill lingered in the air while bugs were swarming around the lights that lit up the new turf field. The score was Slinger 14-7 and the clock was ticking down as I was anxiously waiting for the six-minute mark. I didn 't realize untill we got onto the field that that this band performance is the one that matters the most. The clock hit six minutes left in the second quarter, which meant it was time to head over to the end zone and get lined up for the performance. As I got off the bleachers, I stretched forgetting that our 20 year old wool,

Head drum major Sydney Walsh, called us to attention as Mr. Sievers was announcing the leaders of the band. I thought to myself that there’s more than three hundred people in the stands that are going to be watching our performance. All of a sudden I snapped back as we were starting to march out to take the field. I looked over to the right and notice that all of the West Bend West fans were even ready to see what kind of a show we were about to put on. When I got to my spot on the field which was the thirty-two and a half north side yard line. We started out in a formation that looked like a Q from the Owls side stands as we were about to start playing our first piece “Queen Opener”. The movements and formations flowed smoothly as we played through the piece, like making sure to remember what yard lines I stop on and what note in the song I move on. All of this came to my mind naturally like a quarterback knowing when to throw the ball. Then, Mr. Sievers announced the next song which was the color guard feature “Lips are Moving” as we were walking in step to our concert formation. As we were playing the song, I was keeping a close eye on Sydney to make sure I wouldn’t fall behind of the rest of the band due to the song having a faster tempo than what we normally play. When we finished the song we went into parade rest as the drumline walked up to the track and performed their drumline feature, a combination of moving around and playing which really gets the crowd cheering. After the crowd died down from the excitement of the drumline we moved on to our closing piece, “Saturday Night’s Alright”. This was my favorite song of the year. I enjoyed this song so much that I took the extra time to memorize it and make it easier for me to watch our formations and make sure we look right in the drill as we played throughout the song. We started out in a box shaped formation and throughout the song, we would change to different shapes and move at different speeds while the