HCHS Marching Band compete in Semi-Finals Saturday; chance to go-to-state
The Hancock County High School Marching Band competed last Saturday, October 22 at the Regional Competition for all Class A marching bands on the west side of the state. The competition was at Warren East High School. This coming Saturday morning, October 29 they will compete in the Semi-Finals at Bryant Station High School and then possibly move on to the Championships that evening at Eastern Kentucky University.
There are 12 bands total that will be competing in the Semi-Finals: six bands from Western Kentucky and six bands from Eastern Kentucky. From those 12 bands, only 6 will be moving on to compete in the Finals for the Championship Saturday evening.
Zachary Buskill HCHS Band Director gives an update on their last competition on October 22: “They did well. It was our Regional performance. We placed Third at the Region. And comparing the West Region and the East Region combined, we are currently Third in the State for our class (Class A). The distance between us and Second and First is really close. You never know exactly how it’s all going to shake-out, but the kids are really close to the top so they are in a good position.”
The students have been adding in new elements of their Swan Song performance for each competition and last Saturday’s performance included the show in it’s entirety, Buskill said.
He talked about how their practices have been going since fall break. “We came back from fall break last week and they did really well (at practice) on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. Then on Thursday and Friday practices, we really had our worst days of the year. It happens to every group – you have bad days. The staff and I were really unsure how the kids were going to perform on Saturday (October 22 at Region) because they had just come off of two of their worst rehearsals but they did well.”
Buskill added: “We’re hopeful that the kids will come in this week and they’ll be focused and ready to have good practices and hopefully that will lead to our best performance of the year this weekend (at Semi-Finals on Saturday morning).”
He said the weather really can make it challenging music-wise sometimes. “Especially with brass instruments,” he said, “it changes the feeling you get when you play them. It’s pretty common when instruments get cold, that it can impact tuning and pitch. Fortunately for us, last week and this week are looking to be pretty mild. We haven’t really had to deal with cold weather much. We did have one week before fall break where we experienced some cold temperatures in the 40’s but the kids did really well. We are hoping not to get rain on Saturday. There is a 30 percent chance currently. Rain is the worst, as you can imagine. We have a lot of electronic equipment and it’s no fun. So hopefully we can avoid that. . .We are looking forward to it.”
Next Monday, October 31 the HCHS Marching Band will be performing for the students at South Hancock Elementary in the morning at 9:00 a.m. and then at North Hancock Elementary in the afternoon at 2:00 p.m. “We’ll be inside their gyms playing,” Buskill said. “It’ll be exactly what we play for marching band – it’ll just be in an arc and we won’t move, we’ll just play. The Color Guard will move and do all their routines.”
They will also be playing for HCMS and HCHS out on the football field on Thursday, November 3 at 2:30 p.m. during school. They will do their entire performance (weather permitting). If it rains they will either reschedule or try and do the performance in the HCHS gymnasium.
The band students and staff have been practicing long hours for many weeks. If you’re able to, please try and attend their final performances this weekend and cheer them on.
