2013 Kick Off Camp

Today was the official kick off day for band camp! We all worked on basic techniques and warm ups that we'll be doing during the show season. At the very end of the day we did a show and tell with the winds, pit, drumline and cymbals. It was really cool seeing the drummers that show what they've been working on during some of their summer practices that they did. The band overall looks in great shape for the busy and fun season that's coming ahead.

The pit kids working on their scales and their technique.

The cymbal line practicing good technique to move those 18 inch cymabals.

Some of the mellophones practicing on the technique and warm ups that the winds received this morning.

The lowheads being well, low heads!

Kamiak Winter Percussion Wins First Place in WGI West Coast Finals

The Kamiak Band Program extends a HUGE congratulations to Kamiak Winter Percussion, who traveled to San Bernardino, California in March. After placing second in Prelims they came back to win the Scholastic A Class West Coast Championship Finals! We are so proud of your hard work.

The dedicated students of Kamiak Winter Percussion have worked many long months and definitely deserve this title. We are so excited to see what else they have to offer both now and in the future.

Watch Prelims Performance

Winter Percussion Update

Kamiak Winter Percussion has been hard at work, rehearsing on Tuesdays, Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays. This group shows true dedication. On Saturday, February 9, Kamiak took first place at Evergreen High School with the show entitled Free. Great job guys!

 

Scores:

Kamiak 71.45 (General Effect, Performance Analysis and Visual)

Sunset 69.50

Southridge 68.50

Evergreen 68.05

Skyview 65.55

Westview 63.20

Be sure to check them out , along with the winter guards, at the Kamiak Winter Festival on March 15!

Spring Dates to Remember:
February 23 - Kamiak Winter Percussion Flapjack Fundraiser @ Lynnwood Applebees
March 2 - Winter Percussion NWAPA Show @ Skyview High School
March 14 - Band Concert @ Kamiak PAC
March 15 - Winter Percussion Performance @ Kamiak Main Gym
March 16 - Kamiak Winter Guard Competition @ Kamiak
March 21-24 - WGI Winter Percussion Championships @ San Bernadino, CA
April 13 - NWAPA Championships @ Sherwood High School
April 16 - Winter Percussion Awards Night
April 19 - Rosehill Performing Arts Fundraiser

Winter Percussion

Though for most kids the busy season is over, our award-winning winter percussion has been hard at work. This year's show is entitled "Free." This past week alone, these dedicated students worked on Friday and Saturday.

While they were at practice on Friday, the rest of the band kids were playing in the pep band cheering on the boys basketball game. The Winter Percussion rehearsed from 2:00PM-9:00PM.

On Saturday they spent ten hours rehearsing in order to hold up their reputation as one of the best Winter Percussion groups around.

Build the Band Campaign

It was a lot of fun to perform the show music one last time tonight at the winter band concert, a big thank you to everyone who came out. Check back here in the future, we'll be doing our best to give you Winter Percussion and Winter Guard updates as the season progresses.

On a more serious note, you probably noticed a few students were performing our show music without instruments this evening. This is because our school instruments are older than the students playing them and are constantly in need of repair or no longer work. We are now working towards a solution:

Kamiak is in need of some new instruments. Because of this, the boosters has partnered with the students to create a student-led fundraising campaign we have decided to call "Build the Band." Our goal is to raise $100,000 for instruments over the next several years. Tonight we raised $1,112.30! On the Build the Band Facebook page you can view a brief history, mission statement, donate, find out information about upcoming fundraisers, and track our progress.

Support us by liking our campaign on Facebook

Thank you to everyone who donated tonight, we are very excited to continue with this campaign!

Show Band Awards Night & Season Wrap-Up

Wednesday was the annual Show Band Awards Night in the Kamiak Commons. At the beginning of the evening, we watched a slideshow featuring pictures from throughout the season that was put together by Alex Brinkley. Then each student was called up and received a Participation Award from Mr. Bathurst, and the drum majors were thanked. The Student Leadership Committe was also called up to be recognized.

Our head chaperone and the band liaison both took time to recognize our wonderful parents, boosters, and volunteers. The staff thanked the parents for trusting the staff with their children, and for allowing us to have such a successful season.

Colorguard Awards were given next, by guard director Jon Brown. This was followed by the percussion staff and percussion awards. The visual staff, brass staff, and woodwind staff also gave out awards.

Many awards were given out to the colorguard, percussion, and winds, including Most Improved, Best Marcher, MVP, Most Inspirational, Most Outstanding Section (shout out to the Lowheads!), and awards for Most Outstanding in Class.

Mr. Bathurst called all of the staff members up to be recognized and gave them giftcards. The students also had a surprise for the staff. They wrote little thank you notes to the staff to show appreciation for their dedication to the show band this year. Each staff member was presented with a ring of thank you notes.

It was great to get together as a band for the last time. It was fun to eat cake, see the staff dressed up, and recognize each member of the band. We ended the night by watching our finals performance from Championships. Some of the sections gathered together with their staff afterwards to thank them one last time.

SEASON RECAP & HIGHLIGHTS:

• Band Camp was August 13-17, 2012. A very successful camp, a great time, skit night was awesome, the dance was incredibly fun!
• This season we had the hardest-working show band ever to pass through the halls of Kamiak High School
• September 14, 2012 - First pep assembly day and first football game!
• September 22, 2012 - Goddard Day & Alumni Reunion! We were very excited to reveal our show to the parents and the community.
• September 26, 2012 - The Homecoming Parade!
• Our first competition was the Sunset Classic in Hillsboro, Oregon on October 6, 2012. We placed fourth in finals with a score of 77.05
• On October 13, 2012 Kamiak took the Sweepstakes award at Tumwater High School with a finals score of 87.4, also taking the awards for Best General Effect, Music, Marching, Colorguard, and Percussion
• Our third show was the Puget Sound Festival of Bands in Everett on October 27, 2012. Kamiak took second overall with a score of 87.08 along with the awards for People's Choice, High Colorguard, and High Percussion.
• Championships weekend was November 2-4, 2012. Kamiak took fifth place in Championships, competing against the best bands in the northwest and received a score of 87.45! This is the highest Kamiak has ever placed at the NWAPA Marching Band Championships.
• November 7, 2012 Kamiak Show Band Awards Night
• For photos and videos from the season check out the Photo Gallery

DATES TO REMEMBER:
November 13 - Winter Percussion Open House
November 14- Jazz Night
November 15 - KPAB Booster Meeting
November 20 - Winter Percussion Open House
November 27-29 - Winter Percussion Auditions
December 6 - Band Concert
December 16 - Messiah Concert

Championships Recap

Bus One leaving Mukilteo on Friday (photo by Cynthia Davis)

On Friday after school we loaded the buses and trailers for our trip down to Hillsboro. By 3:30PM we had left the school and were on our way to Oregon. We hit traffic, so we were a bit late to stop for dinner at Exit 108. Our original itinterary had us stopping for dinner at five, but because of the traffic our dinner break was from 6:15-7.

It had been raining pretty hard, and after the staff checked out the field at Tenino High School where we were supposed to rehearse, we decided to skip it and push through to Hillsboro. We had a quick bathroom break about an hour after dinner and arrived at Glencoe High School in Hillsboro at around 11PM.
After unloading the buses we had a quick meeting with Mr. Bathurst to discuss our plans for the evening. Lights out was at 11:45PM.



Back of the line for breakfast!

Wake-up call was at 7:30AM, followed by breakfast at 8:30. By 9:30 we were headed to Hillsboro Stadium for an early warm-up block since we had missed our rehearsal the night before.

Our morning rehearsal/warm-up block at Hillsboro Stadium (photo by Stuart Pitts)

After our morning visual and music warm-up block we headed to lunch. At 1:15PM we were back at camp, changing into uniform for our Prelims warm-up. At 2:00 we walked to our warm-up area. Our Prelims performance was at 3:45.

Headed to our prelims performance (photo courtesy of Stuart Pitts)

We did not feel great about our prelims show. The whole show had just felt a bit off. After going to the awards ceremony, we received fifth place with a score of 86. Only .5 away from Evergreen High School! We had never placed this high before and were very excited to perform in finals.

Dinner was cooked by our lovely parent volunteers. We ate burgers, salad, veggies, and pudding. A few alumni even stopped by the camp to say hello.

As we prepared for our finals performance there was a lot of excitement in the air. We were ready to give it our all. We headed to our last warm-up as the 2012 Kamiak Show Band.

Nick says a few words before we head to our finals performance (photo by Stuart Pitts)

We walked off of the field after finals feeling great about our performance. It had definitely been the best run of the season. We circled up to listen to a words from Stuart Pitts, Nick Benson, and Mr. Bathurst. All of them were very excited and very proud of what we had accomplished this year. A lot of tears were shed. After this we broke off quickly into sections and subsections, thanking the staff and each other for everything put into this program.

We changed out of uniform and headed off to the awards ceremony. We were happy to learn that our score had jumped to 87.45 and we had finished fifth, higher than the show band had ever placed!

These seniors got Nick Benson a birthday cake, since his birthday was the day after Championships.

At around 11:20PM we left Hillsboro Stadium and headed home. We stopped twice for bathroom breaks. One in Toutle Creek. We arrived safely at Kamiak at around 3:00AM (because of daylight savings time).

Thanks to everyone who supported us this year. Every staff member, chaperone, roadie, volunteer, and fan means the world to us. We could not do it without you!

Check the Gallery for more photos from the weekend.

CHAMPIONSHIPS WEEKEND!

3:30PM The buses have left Kamiak
7:10PM Reloading the buses after dinner break.

11:19PM We have arrived at Glencoe High School
8:24 Waiting for breakfast
9:30 On buses headed to morning rehearsal
12:13 Lunch time
11:10PM Kamiak placed fifth (THE HIGHEST IN KAMIAK HISTORY!) with a score of 87.45. We are so excited about this show and feel great about our performance.
More details in a recap tomorrow. We're headed home!
3:15AM Home safe and sound

Last Thursday Rehearsal & Senior Ceremony

Practice began at 5:30PM as usual. We were lucky enough to have the turf field, which isn't soggy, and the weather held up too.
We worked through basics, and you could feel the excitement in the air. After basics we headed to music warm-ups, brass and woodwinds separate. During woodwind warm-ups, they did a round where just the seniors played, since it was their last rehearsal ever. The brass were reminded that this was the last time this group would ever rehearse together at Kamiak.

Everyone joined again to work on choreography with some of our visual staff. We then set to work on the Closer and the end of the show, working hard to perfect it. Half of rehearsal was spent on this portion of our show, because up to this point it was the weakest. After spending so much time running it this evening, and having Nick Benson on the field, we feel a lot more comfortable with the section and are excited to perform it this weekend.

We also worked on the Ravel (the middle of the show). Our show improved a lot musically today, and our dynamics are better than ever.

At 8:20PM we did our last full-run at Kamiak.


SENIOR CEREMONY
At around 8:30PM the seniors left the field and went into the stands to watch the rest of the band perform the Closer without them. The seniors made sure to cheer very loudly.
After the brief performance the students met on the track, seniors on one side, everyone else on the other. Mr. Bathurst began this part of the ceremony with a speech, thanking the seniors for all of their hard work and leadership over this season and over the past four years. Stuart Pitts, a brass/visual technician also gave a short speech. He had been the head drum major when the seniors were freshman. He talked about how much they had done for this program, how proud he was of the show band,and how far the band has come. He thanked the seniors and said that he was honored to have had the opportunity to work with this band.
There were tears on both sides of the form as everyone met in the middle to hug the seniors. More hugs were given at this senior ceremony than any other in the past. The band truly has become a family this year.

Following the senior ceremony, most people broke off into subsections. It was a fantastic night, and one that will be hard to forget. We are very excited to head down to Championships tomorrow and give it our all.



These three seniors wore the show shirts from their freshman year, "On the Edge"

More photos hopefully coming soon!

A Little Love

This week the Show Band recieved one of the best presents we ever have! The dance team took time to make and sign posters for us thanking us for supporting them and playing for them following our half time shows at football games.

 

The band loves learning new songs for the dance team, new music is always awesome, and we were glad that they enjoy it as well.

 

Some of the great comments included their love for our uniforms, particuarly the overalls, and that they enjoy watching our halfime show.

 

 

Thanks for your support dance team!

Last Tuesday Practice

Today was the last Tuesday practice of the season. Unfortunately, the rain was not on our side today, but we were lucky enough to have indoor space.

We started off with split music warm-up. The brass were in the PAC Auditorium with Nick. The woodwinds were in a PAC classroom. The band room was occupied by the battery.

Mr. Bathurst was able to gain use of the Auxiliary Gym, so after music warm-ups we had a choreography session with the visual staff from 6-7:15. We learned a lot of new choreography for the end of the show that we are excited to put onto the field on Thursday.

From 7:30 to 8:30 we all gathered in the PAC Auditorium to rehearse the music and put the minor adjustments together. It was pretty loud sometimes!

Hopefully the weather will be a bit better for Thursday's rehearsal before we head down to Oregon this weekend.

Puget Sound Festival of Bands (Everett Show) Recap

A video of our Prelims performance yesterday at the Everett Show.

Video and photos courtesy of Cynthia Davis

Traditionally, the Puget Sound Festival of Bands is a favorite among students. Because we do not host our own show and this one is so close to home, we think of the Everett Show as our "home show." Many former band students come out to watch us perform each year. From 1994-1997 the PSFOB was actually held at Goddard Memorial Stadium, which goes to show how meaningful this perfomance is for Kamiak students (for a history of PSFOB click here).

At 9:00AM we showed up at Kamiak for a morning rehearsal on the turf field. It was raining pretty hard, and we were a little worried about how the weather would be for our performances. We ended practice an hour early, at eleven, so that we would have time to dry off before leaving for Everett.

At 1:30PM the buses departed for Everett Memorial Stadium, and by 2:30PM Kamiak was in uniform and ready for warm-ups.

Our prelims performance was scheduled for 3:54PM, and we walked off of the field knowing that it had been our best perfomance in uniform. After our performance we took a group picture. Prelims scores were announced with Kamiak taking second place both overall and in the Open Class, receiving a score of 85.05. We also received the awards for High Percussion and High Color Guard.

Dinner break was until 7:15. Our finals performance was at 8:24PM. Warm-ups went really well and there was a lot of excitement among band members. We felt good about our performance.

After finals we returned to camp briefly to put away our instruments and then headed out to full retreat. We received medals for second place which were given to us by members of Cascade's band.

Sweepstakes- Central Valley 89.35
2nd Place- Kamiak 87.08
3rd Place- Sunset 86.08
Kamiak also took the People's Choice award and the awards for High Colorguard and High Percussion.






Thank you to everyone who came out to the competition!

Everett Show

This post will be updated throughout the day.
9:00AM Rehearsal at Kamiak on the turf. Worked through the closer, the intro, and a bit of the Ravel before a full run.
11:15AM Rehearsal ended a bit early due to the rain so we have time to dry off before we leave at one thirty.
1:37 Buses leave Kamiak
2:00 Buses arrive in Everett
5:25 Kamiak placed second (only losing to Central Valley) with a score 85.05. We took high percussion and best colorguard. Our finals performance is at 8:24PM

Kamiak finishes with Second Place, High Percussion, High Colorguard, and the People's Choice Award. Thanks to everyone who came out to support!

Friday!

Tonight we hit the field on a Friday for the fist time in a long time.

Nick Benson met early with quite a few of our members to work on choreography. It was definitely much improved and should look great tomorrow!

Most of rehearsal was spent reviewing and perfecting the Closer. This was followed by a quick music warm-up. Calvin, one of our favorite staff members, came in from college and showed up at our rehearsal tonight. We are thrilled to have him back for the weekend. After music warm-up we moved onto the turf to finish off the last half hour of rehearsal.

Tonight's rehearsal was definitely not our best, and it was frustrating for everyone. Nick gave us a talk before our run-through and we are ready to show up tomorrow morning and have the best rehearsal and performance yet.

We are very excited to be hosting Central Valley High School for the competition this weekend. CV took first place at the NWAPA Championships last year. Each of the Kamiak sections put together treats for the corresponding CV sections as a way of welcoming them to our school. We also invited them out to watch our run-through at the end of the evening, and allowed them to use our field for their senior ceremony. We are excited to cheer them on tomorrow and to watch one of the best bands in the northwest perform!

Thursday Night Football (Last Game)

Our last official football game was tonight, and it was by far the most memorable game! The Kamiak football team beat Snohomish 35-21 in a well-played game.

Because the game was on a Thursday night, the student section was a lot smaller than usual, but the Pep Band had no problem stepping it up. Despite the smaller crowd, this game was particularly rowdy and was the highlight of four years of football games for most seniors. We were on our feet the enitre time, and joined the cheerleaders in cheering our team to victory.

Our halftime run-through was one of our best football performances, and we are getting excited for the Everett show this weekend! After a well-deserved third quarter break the pep band returned to the stands and Mr. Bathurst graciously allowed the seniors to pick their favorite songs for their final quarter. Two of the tunes chosen were "Louie, Louie" and "You Can Call Me Al."

After the game while students were packing up, a few Snohomish football players spoke with two band members. They said that our band was very good, that we were better than many of the other pep bands, and that they enjoyed our playing. The seniors were the last to leave the stadium. Several stayed behind in the stands to reflect on their experiences over the last four years at Frank Goddard Memorial Stadium. Another group of band kids were having a dance party in the parking lot to celebrate. Overall it was a great night for everyone who attended and is something we will all remember for years to come.

For more photos from tonight's game click here.

Choreography

A handful of our winds showed up today at 4:30 to learn choreography for the end of the show with Nick Benson. It was really helpful because we were able to focus on dot cleaning during rehearsal.

At five thirty we started practice with a warm-up lap and basics block. We quickly moved into visual sectionals, where we learned choreography for the beginning of the show. This was followed by a brief music warm-up in sectionals. The remainder of the evening was spent cleaning up the first half of our show. The weather held out for rehearsal.

We have a football game this Thursday. Our next rehearsal is Friday.
Saturday is the Everett Show.

Football Game

Yesterday was our fourth fooball game. The band arrived at around 6:15 to change into uniform and warm-up. We then marched into the stands to take our usual place next to the student section. Since it was Senior Night, we waited while they recognized all of the senior football players and cheerleaders. We then played The Star Spangled Banner followed by the Kamiak Fight Song to kick off the game.


It wasn't raining very hard, so we left the stands with about five minutes left in the second quarter to warm-up for our halftime performance. As we marched onto the field they announced the names of the Show Band seniors. For the past three games we have performed the Intro and the Ravel since the entire show is too long. This time we peformed the Ravel, the Tango, and the Closer. It was very exciting to show the school a different portion of our show. As soon as we had finished the show the dance team joined us on the field and we played "Runaway Baby" by Bruno Mars for their routine.

We took third quarter off to get dinner from the weenie wagon (thanks parent volunteers!) and to take a break from pep music. We finished off fourth quarter by playing some of our favorite pep tunes such as "Land of 1000 Dances" and "You Can Cal Me Al."

Kamiak ended up winning the game against Cascade. The student body stormed the field and then the football team came and joined us for the fight song.

Only one more football game left this season!

For more photos see the Show Band Gallery

Rainy Practice

The colorguard rehearsing as the band shows up at 5:30PM

Our first rainy rehearsal of the season! It was just starting to rain at around 5:30 when practice began this evening. We moved into basics block, and worked on our slides for about thirty minutes.

By the time we were on the field and learning the new drill it was starting to pour.
Nick was teaching us the end of our show, which is a short, post-show movement that comes after the Closer. We pushed through the first hour and a half of rehearsal, working until we had learned the last few sets. As soon as we had learned the drill we had quick rehearsal wrap-up and were excused at around 7:15PM.

Tomorrow we have a football game!
Make sure everyone has a rain jacket for future rehearsals!

Drill Cleaning

Colorguard joined us today for a full rehearsal. The band worked on cleaning drill and added a new piece of woodwind choreography alongside the colorguard.

The battery spent most of tonight's rehearsal reviewing tempos throughout the show.
We ended with a quick music warm-up and a full run of the show at the adjusted tempos.

Tumwater Recap

Kamiak did very well at Tumwater. I heard a lot of good comments from parents. After a quick morning music rehearsal in the PAC we headed off to the competition. Immediately after we arrived we unloaded the buses, dressed in our uniforms, and went off to warm-up for prelims. It was very wet, but our perfomance was pretty good overall. We ended prelims with first place.

After the prelims awards ceremony we headed back to camp for a 5:00 dinner. The hot spaghetti and meatballs were very delicious since the weather was a bit miserable. Since our finals performance wasn't until around 8:30, we were lucky enough to have the opportunity to watch the first few finals perfomances. At 6:30PM we headed to warm-ups. Our finals performance was also very good. We had a quick wrap-up after finals with the staff and rushed out for full retreat.

Video of the bands at full retreat:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3lXj457s1M&feature=plcp

Video of the awards ceremony:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJtcGBwz7co&feature=plcp

Here are the results for Open Class:

Open Class

	Prelims	Finals	Average
Kamiak	86.5	87.4	86.9
*Newport	77.9		39.0
North Kitsap	73.7	73.9	73.8

 (Wenatchee is AAA Class but took second overall with a score of 81.9)

Open Class Caption Awards:
Best General Effect	Kamiak HS
Best Music	Kamiak HS
Best Marching	Kamiak HS
Best Color Guard	Kamiak HS
Best Percussion	Kamiak HS
Best Drum Major	*Newport HS

Sweepstakes Winner

Frank Minear – Sweepstakes

Kamiak HS

Tumwater School Dist Leadership Team

Kamiak trumpet section got up early and met at Denny's before the show.