Many thoughts were racing through the mind of senior Cameron Schuetz, alto saxophone, as he performed with the marching band team against other schools at Belleville West High School on Saturday, Sept. 28.
“I was mostly thinking about what’s gonna happen next in the show,” Schuetz said. “I was kind of looking out, thinking ‘this is a great show’ and ‘we’re doing really good’.”
Schuetz wasn’t thinking that they would ultimately place first for their division in the competition, but they did.
“There were a lot of really good bands that we had time to watch before the awards came out,” Schuetz said. “I’m very proud, and I think we put in a lot of work to get where we were going.”
The Greater St. Louis Marching Festival is an annual competition held in Belleville, Illinois, where various schools from Illinois and Missouri perform.
Their performance, Illuminations, which featured classical pieces and music from Final Fantasy, was rated by judges in several main categories: music, percussion, visuals, color guard, and general effect. The Mustangs received the highest rating in all five categories.
In the minutes before their performance, junior Carter Walton, bass clarinet, said he spent his time focusing on delivering as good a performance as possible.
Like Schuetz, he was pleasantly surprised with the results.
“We did not think we were going to do as well as we did,” Walton said.
Christian Pierce, band instructor, said the 2024-25 school year has thus far been a “pinnacle” one for marching band.
“We’ve put more into our marching band show than we have before, and the students are really living up to it,” Pierce said. “They seem very proud of the work that they’re doing.”
For any upcoming competitions, the team incorporates specific drills and rehearsals into their after school practices, Pierce said. These drills might change depending on what they have to perform.
“For [the festival], we had three quarters of our whole competitive show ready to go, so the week leading up to it was just a lot of getting confident on what we were doing,” Pierce said. “A lot of repetition through things to make sure we were ready.”
Having worked as a band instructor at MHS for five years, Pierce said he has enjoyed seeing the marching band change.
“I know the students are very competitive, so we’ll probably be having a conversation with them at the end of the season about the next steps they want to achieve,” Pierce said. “There’s always different competitions we can go to that might be a little more competitive than the ones we go to right now.”
Marching band will perform again at 12:45 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 12, at the Fort Zumwalt North High School River City Showcase.
