Percussive Perfection

This Saturday the Hackett Marching Band performed in the Portage Central Marching Invitational. This is the second year that Portage has hosted the invitational and it had a great turnout of 18 bands.

A band invitational is a great opportunity for students to get feedback on the show that they worked so hard to learn and see how they stack up against other bands.

To determine what place each band gets they are judged by adjudicators. Adjudicators write comments for each band to improve on, give them a score, and sometimes awards. Each band is graded on five different categories; marching, music, percussion, color guard, and overall visual effect.

Hackett placed third out of the eight class D bands with a score of 78.0 points! Gobles got first place with 80.2 points, only 2.2 points better. Hackett also received special “caption” awards for marching and percussion. A Caption award is given to a band that had an outstanding performance in one of the five different grading categories. Gavin Sehy, the section leader of the drum line said “I wasn't expecting to win percussion, but I suppose I'm not surprised. The drumline had much harder music this year, but we stepped up and got it down. I think the judges gave us a lot of credit for that. Last year there were 6 bands and we got second in percussion, this year with more competition we got first.” Getting two Caption awards especially with more competition is an impressive feat.

The marching season isn't over yet. The band will be performing at two more home football games and MSBOA festival. With a lot of practice under their feet the band keeps improving the show and is set up for a great rest of the year.