The Pea Ridge High School Band has enjoyed a very successful marching contest season this fall. The band participated at the Elkins Invitation Marching Contest on Tuesday, Oct.
8, and received a Second Division Rating of “Excellent” from all three judges at the Elkins Contest and took home a trophy for the award. Ten area bands attended that particular contest, including Gravette, Prairie Grove, Farmington and Shiloh.
Two weeks later, the band went to the ASBOA Region VI Marching Assessment on Tuesday, Oct.
22, at Rogers High School and all of the bands in Region VI attended, including bands from Mountain Home, Harrison, Cotter, Berryville, Gravette, Gentry, Heritage, Bentonville and Rogers High School.
The band’s halftime/ competition show theme this fall is entitled “Super-Bat-Wars.” It combines the main title themes to the movies “Superman” from 1978, “Batman” from 1989 and the original 1977 “Star Wars.” Matt McCool and Katie Hendrix, the band’s head director and assistant director respectively, came up with the show idea.
They originally thought of having the band performstrictly a comic book super hero show, but then decided to combine three kinds of heroes into one that had the abilities of all three. So, they thought of Batman, which has been very popular lately with the recent Christopher Nolan “Dark Knight” series of movies, combined with Superman, who also had a recent movie come out called “The Man of Steel,” and have that character wield a light saber. Each year the band gets show T-shirts that contain the halftime show’s title, theme and artwork with it. So the shirt had “Super Bat Wars” on the front, and on the back of the shirt was Batman with the Superman diamond shape logo on his chest carrying a light saber. This shirt has been seen all throughout the high school halls all fall and several teachers and students have commented on how clever the shirt and the themewas. Some who are not members of the band liked it so much, they bought a band shirt just to wear it for fun. So the band’s competition show has been a big hit with the band students as well as the audiences at the games and marching contests. The band was awarded a second division rating of “Excellent” by all three judges at the region assessment.
The band’s senior drum major, Aaron Jackson, has had a unique outfit that he wears in spirit of the “Super Bat Wars” theme. He wears a Batman cape and mask and carries a light saber, which has an LED light in it and is capable of having red light turned on and o◊with the well-known unique saber sound from the Star Wars movies. Jackson uses the saber in his o◊cial salute for the band to the audience and to the judges at marching contests.
Three band students are featured in the “Super Bat Wars” show - sophomore Kallie Koon performs two solos on trumpet during the show with one the “Planet Krypton” theme at the beginning of Superman as well as the theme to the Star Wars character “Princess Leia” at the beginning of Star Wars. Koon received high marks from the judges at contests for her solos. Junior Hannah Hall performs a choreographed dance as a member of the flag line during Koon’s solo in Star Wars. Sophomore Alan Sicairos is also featured on trombone during Superman.
The band is experiencing a level of consistency at marching contests that they have not had in several years. They hope to continue this success into the concert contest season which will begin after the winter break.
Sports, Pages 9 on 10/30/2013