On Saturday, Sept. 22, the Timber Creek band made Keller ISD history. They became the first high school band in the district to win a Bands Of America Regional Competition.
The band attended the BOA Midland contest this weekend held at the Grande Communications Stadium in Midland, TX. After roughly 60 hours of rehearsal and hard work, the band took on a seven hour bus ride ready to compete.
“This year has been the hardest year the [band] has ever worked,” said senior mellophone section leader Arianna Teitelbaum, “We are already farther ahead than we were in years passed, and because of that, amazing things are happening.”
Due to weather issues, the band had only performed a full-run of their show once before competing it. With so many changes to the show in the week preceding the contest, this could have been a set-back, but the maturity of the band students allowed them to easily overcome this obstacle.
“Because we have only performed the show to an audience once, I was really scared for the first performance. I didn’t know how it was going to go. but, it went better than I thought it would. Yes, there were mistakes, but it was overall a really good performance.” said Teitelbaum.
During preliminary results, the band tied for the music and visual captions with the Coppell High School Marching Band, and outright won the general effect caption. They also were announced as the AAAA class champions, another first for Timber Creek.
“When we were announced first place in prelims, I was not only extremely excited, but I just knew we were going to place first in finals.” said Teitelbaum.
Following the performance, the band ate a quick dinner, and met with band directors Darla McBryde, Hunter Bown and Daniel Malacon to recap the prelims performance and listen to judge tapes.
“Because we had listened to the field judge comments before our finals performance, we were completely focused on what we could fix and make better. This made the finals performance significantly better.” said Teitelbaum.
In finals, the band received all captions and placed first with a score of 78.05, a record high score for the band. Seeing all of their hard work pay off has set the tone for the rest of the season, and has brought them one step closer to their goal of making the state marching contest.
“I am so glad to be apart of this band program,” said Teitelbaum, “I am super excited to see how far we will go this season.”
