SVHS Band Director Mr. Kurt Sand called into the Weekday Wakeup on Monday, October 20 to summarize the State Marching Band competition held Saturday in Casper.

The Marching Braves earned an “Excellent” rating and 2nd place overall in 3A. Their full performance is also be viewed below.

(0:00) Joining me live over the phone right now is Mr. Kurt Sand, (0:03) Starbighter High School Marching Band Director, (0:05) and just finishing up their competition on Saturday at the State Marching Band Festival. (0:10) Mr. Sand, good morning. It was a great weekend for you guys.

(0:15) It really was. Good morning, Duke. We had a great time.

(0:20) So let’s tell us how things went. It was kind of the first year you could compete, (0:25) still ratings were handed out. How’d your band do? (0:28) So the band received an excellent rating this year in terms of a festival rating, (0:35) and then in terms of scoring, we played second in the 3A competition.

(0:42) Just, and this is the killer, just 0.5, a half a point out of first place. (0:49) Cody took first place, and yeah, they scored 0.5 above us out of 600 and almost 50 points. (0:56) So it was really, really about as close to a tie as you can possibly get, I guess.

(1:01) Absolutely. Well, watching the band, and people can go back and see the band’s full performance (1:06) on the Starbighter Independent Facebook page. It’s been uploaded there.

People can go watch it. (1:11) This is such a cool event for the band, and what is it like for the band to be able to go out and (1:19) compete and have kind of their moment at a state culminating event? (1:24) Well, that’s just it. There’s about 22 bands from across the state that put themselves out there on (1:31) a state platform, on a state stage, if you will, to show what they’ve got to the rest of the state (1:38) and the rest of the bands around the state that choose to do that.

It’s a wonderful event (1:45) to showcase the marching arts, if you will, the movement and making music at the same time (1:52) in an expressive, creative way. And I just really enjoy the vibe, if you will, there, (2:01) because everybody knows how hard it is to get that many people moving like that and playing like (2:07) that, and it takes lots of work, lots of hours. And there is a lot of mutual appreciation there (2:12) and support, and we really, really enjoy that event.

And we like to show ourselves off (2:20) in a positive way and in a quality way. We try to put out our best effort out there. (2:28) You know, I don’t know, maybe people don’t realize you mentioned all the work and all (2:32) the hours that go into it.

This isn’t something that you put together during band class. I mean, (2:37) this is an extracurricular activity that starts with summer camps, after school practices. Tell (2:42) us more about that.

Well, I suppose technically, if you want to call it, it is a co-curricular (2:49) because marching band is the curriculum of study during band class this first couple of months. (2:55) But so we do rehearse during class, and we rehearse on Wednesday nights after everybody else’s, (3:02) you know, all my football players and my brave cadets and everybody else does their (3:06) after-school practices. Then we get together and we rehearse on Wednesday nights from 6.30 to 8.30. (3:12) Any Friday that there is not school, we rehearse for about three and a half, four hours (3:15) on Friday mornings.

Yeah, and then we have our camp during July. Kids are getting together in (3:22) sectional work and small group work in those weeks in between camp and school starting. So, (3:29) yeah, it’s a bunch of time because it takes just so much time to get the repetition to where you (3:36) get it just exactly right.

You know, we have a little saying on our front wall of our band room (3:42) here at the high school that says, we don’t practice until we get it right, we practice until (3:46) it never goes wrong. And that takes sometimes a lot of reps and a lot of effort. Yeah.

(3:52) Mr. Kurt Sand, Star Valley High School Marching Braves Band Director. Mr. Sand, (3:56) if you could just summarize the performance for us and how things went again on Saturday, (4:00) how would you do that? Well, it was really, really special. (4:07) Like you said, this is the first year in most everybody’s memory.

I think if you’re a real (4:13) old timer, you might remember back in the 1960s, 70s, early 80s, they might have had some sort of (4:20) competitions for marching band way back in the day in the state of Wyoming. I actually have a (4:26) trophy in my room here from 1957. So apparently there was some sort of competition way back when.

(4:33) But in the last, what, 40, almost 50 years, there hasn’t been competition in the state. (4:41) So we’re excited about putting ourselves in the mix for a state championship. (4:45) And that was our goal from day one of camp.

And man, they just performed so well, marching, (4:53) playing. We received caption awards, which is a special recognition for high achievement (4:57) in both our color guard and our marching. The way it works, Duke, is there’s two judges for (5:04) marching and maneuvering and visuals.

There’s two judges for music. And then there’s a judge (5:09) that’s specifically looking at color guard and a judge that’s specifically looking at (5:14) and listening to percussion. And you combine all of those scores together for your total (5:18) ranking and score.

And we did really, really well. Yeah, absolutely. Congratulations on the (5:24) two captions, state runner ups, and an excellent rating.

That’s Mr. Kurt Sand, (5:28) Starbody Marching Braves. Mr. Sand, thank you so much. We appreciate it.

(5:32) Hey, appreciate you guys. Thank you. (5:34) It’s all part of the weekday wake up this morning on SVI Radio.