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!

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.

Goddard Day

Yesterday was a long day for the Kamiak Show Band, but it was well worth our time.

After a late night at the football game we were back at Frank Goddard Memorial Stadium for 9:00AM rehearsal. Jack led us in stretches and then we did basic exercises with the visual staff. It was good to have Calvin Fackrell, one of our visual staff members, back for the day (he is currently studying to be a music teacher and cannot be at our regular rehearsals). The basics exercises are designed to engage our core muscles needed for marching.

Following this, we jumped right into drill with Nick Benson. We learned a lot of new choreography for the Tango, which we are very excited about! It still needs practice, but we were able to perform it at the end of the day.

We split off into music rehearsal in sectionals and subsectionals to work on the music for the Closer. Although there is still a lot of room for improvement, by the end of sectionals the music was sounding much better and we were able to put it together after lunch.

Lunch was absolutely delicious. We had burgers provided by our lovely parent volunteers, and desserts, drinks, and fruit provided by the students. Thanks to all of the parents who helped to feed all of the hungry teenagers!

After lunch we finished reviewing the drill. We worked on reviewing both the Intro and the Ravel, and combining all of the drill we have learned so far. It was hard work, but by 5:00PM we were very excited for our performance.

We changed into our uniforms for our the first reveal of our show. It was so cool to look up into the stands and see so many parents, friends, and alumni there to support us. We began with sectional performances by the colorguard, the percussion, and then the winds. All of the staff members were introduced to the parents. Then we performed a musical standstill, which was followed by all of the drill and music we know so far. At the very end we invited Kamiak Show Band Alumni down to perform the fight song with us. It was such a cool experience to see their continued support for the band.

The competitive season is so close, and we are excited to perform around the northwest. Soon we will have the closer drill on the field and in two weeks we have our first competition in Hillsboro, OR at the Sunset Classic!


Photo courtesy of Justin Gaceta

More Goddard pictures coming to the Gallery soon!

First Full Fall Week Wrap-Up

This past week has been an incredible journey for the band. With a parade last Saturday followed by our Battle of the Bands fundraiser we had to jump right into this week. Here's an overview:

Monday: Practiced our show music at school.

Tuesday: Practiced the new music at rehearsal. We started to put the drill from the Tango onto the field.

Wednesday: At school we practiced our show music. We focused mainly on the first half of our music.

Thursday: We learned pep band choreography in class and worked on pep band music. We also reviewed football game etiquette and prepared for the first game. At rehearsal we learned more Tango drill and practiced our football game performance.

Friday: At the pep assembly we performed a portion of our show for the student body at a standstill. That night we performed at our first football game! It was definitely a different experience performing for an audience of that size, but it was a lot if fun!

Saturday: We had a successful rehearsal today. We now have 2/3 of our show on the field!

The entire band warms up before our entrance to the stadium.

The colorguard (in their new uniforms) awaiting our first public performance!

First football game