It’s that time of year again… marching season. If you knew me in high school, you would know that I am the equivalent to Michelle in American Pie : I love marching band! Ever since I joined the marching band’s color guard my sophomore year (shout out to Lindsay and Alex for getting me to join) I became completely obsessed with it.

The obsession starts with band camp. The first day is the best: you get to meet new marching band members, reunite with last year’s members and start learning the new drill and, for the color guard, new dance and equipment choreography. What is also great about the first day is you get to step out on the freshly painted and cut grass. Then the next day the grass is poop, since the marching band spends about five hours a day on that field working on new drill. Band camp is the start of all inside jokes. My favorite memories at band camp are the color guard once trying to get out of exercising by saying we had to fold flags, rifle line saying, “I hate life,” when we tossed our rifles, Josh saying “Resetting!” after every time we had to go back to our previous set, and when our drum majors accidentally ordered too much pizza for the band, so just about everyone got their own large box of pizza (there were almost 60 of us). Every marching band member looks forward to band camp, but we always forget about how we have to run around the field, playing instruments or performing equipment or dance, in 100 degree weather. You’ll never know how great water is until you start band camp.

Then there are the Friday night football games. The first football game is always my favorite one: that is the first time we perform our show in front of an audience. The first football game will always be nerve racking. Will the audience like it? Will I remember my choreography and sets? Will I catch my equipment? Will the music sound good? Will the color guard be on time with each other? But then you get on the field, and every worry is gone. All drama that is happening in your life is gone. Relationship issues are gone. Every time I marched on the field, all worries disappeared. I just performed my heart out, and nothing bothered me. Football games are great, because I got to dance and cheer with my fellow marching bears. I have so many memories I’ll never forget from football games too. Ten minutes before the marching band performed at half time, rifle line would go practice next to the stands to practice.

One time, I almost dropped my rifle on this kid who was playing football near us, after I said to move just in case I hit him. There was this one night where it was super cold, and the color guard had no sleeves on their uniforms, by the way, and after we performed, we found out that concessions ran out of hot chocolate. I was so mad. For some unknown reason, every time the color guard went to go practice outside of the football arena, they band would play "Thriller." All the color guard wanted was to dance to "Thriller!" The color guard only had three songs that we had a set dance for. All the others we just danced on our own. One great memory was my first year of marching band, where the color guard got kicked off of pre-game… we sucked too much for pre-game. The next two years, our color guard improved so much, to where our color guard was great…but our band director still didn’t let us do pre-game. One hilarious memory, what was awful at the time, was my first performance of marching band my sophomore year at a Friday night football game. In the middle of the show, the whole color guard forgot their choreography. We all stopped at the same part, with blank faces. After the show was over, our color guard coach pulled us aside and said, “You guys are my worst color guard ever." The next two years we proved him wrong.

Competitions were my favorite. Not only do you get to perform your new show to be scored by judges, but you get to see other school’s shows as well! At competitions, you get to buy new marching band memorabilia and socialize with other school’s marching band and see their shows. The best part is when other schools say that your marching band’s show was their favorite. Just like band camp and Friday night football games, I have so many great memories I’ll never forget. One of my favorites was when my partner in the second part of the show forgot her prop, so she had to pretend that she was holding it. There’s a video of it too! I watch it every time I’m down. During one of the competitions, this one girl slipped and fell during performance! The whole color guard wished we had that moment on video. The best memories of all my years in marching band, was my very very last competition, my senior year. It started with the marching band making it to finals for the first time in years. When it comes to finals, they do random drawings on what marching band performs when… and we had to perform dead last….at 10 p.m. We were all so upset, because we didn’t feel like being at the competition that late.

Moving forward to awards, we waited for the scores to see who got at what place. The past few years, we seemed to have taught ourselves that we would be dead last. So when they started announcing, it was time to expect the worst. Well, we didn’t get last place, so we were relieved. Then it kept going up and up and up until we got to the top five. One we got past sixth place, we thought we were going to be fifth place. We did not. Then we thought we were going to be fourth place. We did not. We got super excited, because we were in the top three, and we thought be got third place. We did not! Then it’s the top two, knowing we got second place. We got second place. The band who got first always wins. The thing is we almost beat them by four points! I never thought we would ever get this far after being told by my color guard coach that we are his worst color guard he has ever had.

Now the best thing about marching band was the people who were in it. You get so close to people who are in it. I made such great friends in marching band. My color guard got so close with each other. We shared secrets. We had annual sleepovers. Once we had this guy who was on color guard, and we got so close to him all the guard girls were comfortable to change in front of him. He was straight, just to let you know. The color guard was there for each other during for problem they had in life, such as a break up or when some girl is trying to start a fight with our guard girl. Not only did I make friends with the guard, but I made a lifetime friendship with a tuba player.

I’ll miss being in marching band, and I’ll never forget or regret anything I did during the season. Every great memory and every sad memory will never leave my heart. Marching band also made me a better person. I am now stronger person than I was when I started. I used to cry a lot, but now I can take tough situations. Maybe I will continue marching band in my future, but I’ll always be a Marching Bear at heart.