RR#4

It was my junior year and I was on the annual trip to U of I where the most prestigious marching band completion for high schoolers in central Illinois is held. This competition was what we had been preparing for, this was the reason why we started having practices before the school year even started. This competition was extremely important to our band, we had won it the previous three years and we were back to defend our title; it was all I could think about of for a week. Then came the big day, everyone had to at the school for the 4:00 am departure. When everyone got to the school they were welcomed by the smell of diesel fuel from a small fleet of Macomb school busses and the overwhelming pep from our band director. After cramming ourselves into the tiny bus seats we were finally on our way to put our months of hard work to the test.
     As the sun rose and woke us form our lucid sleep hype began to build among band members, no one could wait to perform and get this final performance off our chest and not look back.  As our show time crept up on us our sense of security began to slip away and be replaced by a nervous fear, but before this feeling could set in our peppy band director reinstilled a felling of confidence with a couple bad jokes and reminding us that it is like any other performance. After getting a felling of calm restored my section leader came to me and did his little ritual where he would put his hand on our heart then our cheek and tell us “don’t suck“.
The only thing we had left was to get down to the field,  get introduced, and do what was almost ingrained in our muscle memory. As we took the field a feeling of confidence consumed me, I knew what I had to do and I had done it before, and when I walked off the field I felt a strong feeling of success. There was one small issue we wouldn’t know the results of our performance till late that evening, there was still the majority of the day ahead of us, and as the day wore on there was a general feeling of doubt going around the band because we were now watching all the other bands perform and be amazed by how well we thought they did. Then came the judgment hour our drum majors were called down to the field to receive awards for the band everyone became extremely nervous when they bean to call out the placing in our class; third place not us, second place not us, at this moment everyone is thinking surely we didn’t suck that bad, first place Macomb High School!