A fairly young Jesuit Band excelled at the TPSMEA State Marching Competition last week, earning the title of “Superior,” the best score, which came as no surprise to the always-impressive Jesuit band.
One reason for this much better score after slightly lower marks at the Little Elm Classic on the Lake may be due to the fact that it is difficult to compete with public school bands due to their much greater size. Allen, for instance, has a student body of over 4,000; roughly four times the size of Jesuit’s.
Band director Donovan Putnam recalled how “out of twenty or so bands at the public school competition we were the smallest band whereas at the private school one we were one of the larger bands.”
Although Jesuit had a terrific performance at the private school competition held at Nolan, they still brought home second place. Talking about the competition, Dominic Iannelli ’15 said, “Although we didn’t beat our rival Nolan we feel we played the show our best and everyone is really proud of the performance and how much it as improved since the beginning of the year.”
Asked if the location of the competition may have caused bias, Mr. Putnam replied, “They had a real strong crowd there.
The crowd doesn’t factor in the points but their band did do a really good job.” Obviously, the fact that the Jesuit band is doing a fantastic job lately really exemplifies how much they’ve improved over the last year.
Matthew Miller ’15 expressed his this idea, saying, “I’m really happy about how well we’re continuing to do every performance, despite contest season being over.”
Practicing for months now, the band has been working really hard in order to do as well as they have been doing more recently. As the band progresses into Christmas concerts and other competitions let’s hope they can continue to do a great job representing Jesuit.
