Pride Takes St. Louis by Storm
This weekend the Pride of Broken Arrow stormed into the Bands of America Super Regional in St. Louis and left with all the hardware. As you know our son, Zac, is one of the three drum majors for the Pride. Eight high school marching bands from Oklahoma made the trip. They included Broken Arrow, Piedmont, Jenks, Putnam City North, Sapulpa, Stillwater, Westmoore, and Heavener high schools.
Fifty-six bands from fourteen states (Arkansas, Colorado, Georgia, Illinois, Kansas, Kentucky, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, and Tennessee) performed in the preliminaries on Friday night and Saturday morning and afternoon. Fourteen of those bands advanced to the Saturday evening finals.
One of the bands I found the most enjoyable was from Jackson Academy, Mississippi. This band was only 20 members strong, with seven of them being in the color guard. At one point during the show each member of the color guard was also playing an instrument.
In class competition Piedmont HS won the Class A championship. Marion Catholic HS from Chicago Heights, IL, won the Class 2A championship. Broken Arrow HS won the Class 3A championship. Broken Arrow also won all three awards for their class, Outstanding Music Performance, Outstanding Visual Performance, and Outstanding General Effect.
Piedmont HS did not finish in the top fourteen in the preliminaries, so as Class A champions, they had an exhibition performance during finals. In the finals we knew there would be some very good band performing. Blue Springs HS made it to the semi-finals of last years Grand National competition. Marion Catholic HS is continually one the top bands at Grand Nationals.
In finals competition Paul Laurence Dunbar HS from Kentucky finished third with a score of 83.8. Marion Catholic HS finished second with an 84, just two tenths of a point more than Dunbar. Broken Arrow HS finished first with a score of 87.4. The Pride also captured all three finals awards for Outstanding Music Performance, Outstanding Visual Performance, and Outstanding General Effect.
