While the fall sports season typically revolves around home football games, people tend to overlook one of the most well-executed and entertaining pieces of our school’s home games: the marching band.

Football can be a slower paced game than people realize. Luckily, the band helps bridge the gaps from play to play and quarter to quarter. Additionally, after every game, the band is there to sing the alma mater for the team, whether the team won in a shutout or lost by 20 points. Because of everything the marching band does, along with the high standards they hold themselves to, Band-o-rama makes for one of the best recap shows of all the activities here at school.

The structure of the show was based off of a typical football game format: pre-game, kick-off, the playing of each conference rival’s theme song, during game-time, half-time, and post-game.

During the playing of every conference rival’s theme songs, music teacher and band director William Miller asked for each member of the audience who went to a conference rival to stand during their school’s song.

Seeing the number of people who went to school in the area was entertaining, as was hearing the band’s mistake free rendition of each song and integration of the audience into the performance.

The best part of the night, however, was being able to hear the band play excellent renditions of well-known songs such as “Tonight Tonight” by Hot Chelle Rae and “Hey! Baby!” by Bruce Channel. It was a pleasure to hear pop music played with such energy and enthusiasm, and the mood in the gym followed suit.

One disappointing aspect of the night was the audience. At least two-thirds of the audience was made of the parents and family members of kids in the band. The rest of the audience was a mix, but there was too few non-band-related audience members. For such a great aspect of school to be so overlooked was disappointing, and there’s no excuse for people not to attend in future years.

Overall, Band-o-rama showcased one of the best activities at school and captured the essence of a home football game.