Marching band season nears close at Sam Boyd festival

By Cydney Cappello, Frances Vanderploeg

Published Friday, Nov. 7, 2008 | 10:51 a.m.

Updated Friday, Nov. 7, 2008 | 4:24 p.m.

About 200 parents huddled against the chill at Sam Boyd Stadium Thursday night for the 35th annual Clark County School District Halftime Show Review.

Twenty-eight high school bands braved the cold for one of the last performances of the season. Rick McEnaney, the school district’s secondary fine arts coordinator, said because it was a festival event and not a competition, the schools get a rating of superior, excellent, good, fair or poor, as opposed to rankings.

“We will not be having any poor ratings this year,” he said. “There has been so much improvement in the past three years and with schools like Foothill, Green Valley, Coronado, Sierra Vista -- they’re some of the best in the country.”

The seven judges, from all over the country, were booked more than a year in advance.

“The reason schools come to do this (festival) is to get good feedback, so we have to have the best,” McEnaney said.

Individual music performance judge Mark Petrash of Orange County, Calif., said he looks at individual percussion, woodwind and brass players as he weaves in and out of a band’s ground formations shouting notes into his recorder for his later remarks.

He said a “superior” or perfect performance would include band members attacking notes together, playing in tune and playing with the same style of articulation. Such a rating also would indicate a perfect performance from each individual that translates into success for the whole band.

“Sierra Vista has come close to ‘superior’ as far as performance is concerned,” he said. “Each new competition is an opportunity for them to perform at their best.”

Sierra Vista band director Phillip Haines said the night’s performance was not his band’s best, but it was among the top three.

“I can usually tell what kind of show we had based on (student’s reactions) when they come out,” he said. “I honestly think that it’s going to be a superior rating because those are the scores we’ve been getting for most of the season … in relation to what we could do, it was about 80 percent of what we’re capable of.”

After Sierra Vista left the field, Haines gave the students his evaluation, though he said it was difficult to hear the full sound of the band from the sidelines. He said his band would use its rating and comments from the judges to make improvements for another marching band competition next weekend at Aliso Viejo, Calif.

It’s one of the final performances of the season, and for many of the students it capped a process of growth spanning almost three months. By the end of November, they will have moved on with their marching band lives, knowing they’re a little better than they were months before, whether it’s in their ability to play together, perform together or simply be together.

Foothill High School is finishing its first year in the open class, the largest of the four classes, after watching the band grow by about 30 members in a year.

Drum majors Erika Bresselsmith, Michelle Austin and Koalani Mahe said the sudden increase in numbers made it a little difficult keeping everyone on track at times, but overall they felt like they accomplished what they set out to do.

Austin said one thing they strived for was to beat bands they had never beaten before, such as Sierra Vista, Green Valley and Coronado high schools.

They tied Sierra Vista in their first show, the Henderson Band Fest, and later beat Green Valley. Coronado will have to come next year, though.

There will be one more local competition for the rest of the bands next weekend at the Las Vegas Invitational at Las Vegas High School.