High School Drumlines/Marching Bands

[Finleym]

Originally Posted by Wiifi

So, team 2470 has about 50% of its members in the Marching Band here at my school so I was wondering about other teams and if they and marching bands! The marching band at my school is a high step marching band which personally I think is pretty awesome!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYajI6JfAOc

Yeah, team 2164 had about 75% of our members in band last year. I actually ended up being ten points short of lettering last year because I went to our second robotics regional instead of going to our symphonic band's state band contest (that was 300 lettering points gone... after scratching and clawing for points from anything I could, I ended up ten points short. Talk about frustration).
This year is even worse. Although we doubled in size, only four of the students on the team this year aren't in band.
Our band does glide step. You don't hear of many high step bands anymore. It seems to be almost seems to be a lost art.

[Pavan Dave]

Back in the day, my old team FRC118 had its very own drumline performing at competition in the stands. Most of the members on the team were from band and somehow most of our drumline at Clear Creek High School ended up on the team and so for a season or two we had a pretty much complete line in the stands.

Because of us there was a rule written in the Manual.

3.17
Do not invite or bring live bands to play in the audience. This dilutes the presentation on the playing field and is too loud and confusing for the audience.

But every year our Wind Ensemble's trip would fall under Atlanta and our Regional would fall under our UIL so students would usually choose one or the other but in few cases like in '06, a few students flew to Chicago for their performance and then flow straight to Atlanta minutes after to spend some of Friday and Saturday with the team. But in the end, it usually works out in the best interest of the student. Those who usually went to competition ended up getting full scholarships in music while those who went to Atlanta usually majored in engineering or something of the nature.

Pavan Davé

[Karibou]

We don't have a marching band, but we do have a pep band a drumline. We don't have a marching band because of size and time issues (a lot of kids still do fall sports and have an insane social life), and some bad rules in our school district (I believe that one of the issues is that we can't have a marching band because the other high school in our district has all of 10-20 people in their pep band, and they can't have one, and the two schools have to have equal opportunities ). Our band director also doesn't seem to want to make the commitment :/ However, we still do march in the local parades.
Our drumline is a lot more intensive: we have more practices, we have gigs, and we do a lot of separate music (this is the only video that I can find; not the best quality, but still good). We're not as great as some of the drumlines that are a part of marching bands, but we're not too bad.

We have very few students that are in both robotics and band (in general) :/ Unfortunately, there seem to be several conflicts with competitions. I can't be in the pit orchestra this year because of Traverse City, and there's a conflict with the other school's band trip on the same weekend.

[DonRotolo]

Very nice!

Some teams in the midwest practice in cow fields, which brings a different reason for High-Stepping...

[Al Skierkiewicz]

Wheeling High School (the Wild part of Wildstang) and Rolling Meadows (the Stang part) both have marching bands. The other schools that we have students now attending also have marching bands. Wheeling, this year, won every event it entered including the Marengo festival that has a street parade performance section as well as all of the other sections of a band festival. They took every section as well as the parade and overall competition. Marching band members have always been part of the Wildstang team including a performance in the Disney World Main Street Parade just before a Championship event. Team members on both traveled down with the band and back home with the robot team.