After months of in-school and after-school practices, football games, and an otherwise loaded schedules, the TUHS band’s marching season ended.

They claimed third at Simi Valley, 1st at Frontier High School, 5th (only .67 points away from 2nd) at Fresno State University, and 5th (by nearly the same point margin as Fresno) at Stockdale High School, also earning the high percussion award at Frontier and second highest percussion at Stockdale.

“Even though not all of our awards were first place, I’m still proud of our achievements,” said Emily LeDuc, a flutist. “I’m proud to be part of the band.”

Dominic Krier, trumpeter , said, “We finished with a great show. We finished better than expected,” he added.

Not all of the band’s members have such a positive retrospect about the marching season. “I’d say there were key points that were pretty good, but overall I thought we could have done better,” Zain Bravo, who played mellophone and acted as the Giant, said. When asked about how the newcomers handled the rigor of marching and playing, he said, “Considering how many alternates [those that didn’t have the ability to march and/or play] we had this year, I’d say the newcomers (particularly the freshmen) did fairly poorly; they didn’t handle it very well.”

When asked about his acting role, he said, “I loved doing that because I both played and acted, and that was very enjoyable and good to have that experience.”

Elijah Gonzalez, a new addition to the trombone section, said, “I think it went quite well, considering the lack of experience in certain aspects. We had a lot of newcomers. “In band, you have your good, bad, and middle players, but you need all of them with their individual strengths [marching, playing, acting, etc.] to make a good show.” Since Gonzalez is a newcomer, joining a club/co-ed art comes with social attributes to it as well. “I have felt accepted; I haven’t had any trouble with that.”

In total, most of the band is ready to move on to concert season.