Madeline Kempf

Staff Writer

This weekend the Johnson Marching Band will participate in its first competition of the season. The band has spent countless hours preparing for this competition and the energy is continuing to circulate.

[I’m] very, very excited about it. Lookin’ forward to it; gettin’ out there and giving the band an opportunity to perform in the competition and get the whole show out there for all of our families to see. We’ve been working on it since August so it’s exciting,” head band director Jarrett Lipman said.

The preparation began back at band camp in August which consisted of 12 hour days and an unbelievable work ethic.

“The band more than any other year that we’ve been open in the last three years has made more progress in the last seven weeks than we’ve seen in any group in the campus. They’re getting their music pass offs done, they look better, the sound better, and there’s just a sense of maturity and pride in every band member that we haven’t seen since the school opened. So it’s been pretty exciting,” Lipman said.

The effort and accomplishments put forth will be recognized as the band lays down their show on the football field. As a major competition is in the following week, this weekend is especially taken seriously by the band members.

“The competition is actually pretty low key. It’s a great way to get the feet we. It’s a lot of local San Antonio bands and its a dress rehearsal for the Bands of America Houston Regional, which is the following weekend, so it’s a low stress environment and we can go with whatever we have and put it on the field in Hero’s Stadium and get our families out to see it and get the band members used to performing and warming up and going through the process so that when we get to Houston in the following week, everything is a little more calmer for us.”

Nonetheless, the standards are raised high for the marching band. The excitement and energy will be transferred to the upcoming performance.

“My expectations for this weekend are to have a great first performance and have a lot of our family and our friends excited to see what we’ve got on the field.”