Band received first place at the US Bands Marching Contest on Sept. 22. They received the awards for Best Percussion, Best Visuals, Best Music, Best Overall Effect, and Best Color Guard, as well as getting the best score out of the bands that attended.

On the days leading up to the contest, several band members like senior Jean Nguyen were keeping an open mind about the aftermath of their performance.

“We can definitely get first place. It won’t be hard,” Nguyen said. “Although I’m worried some people will mess it up for us.”

Right after the performance, the band was buzzing with talk of how they did; most people only had positive things to say, but it was a huge surprise when the drum majors walked into the bus and announced that they made first place. Most members like junior Ricardo Hernandez could not believe the outcome.

“I didn’t believe it at first because it was our first contest this year, but it made me super happy to hear that we won first in all captions,” Hernandez said. “It made the success even better because we’ve had our bad days during rehearsal.”

Some members even gave their own criticism on the show. Junior Adrien Lee gave his thoughts about the performance and the potential of the band.

“I thought we did okay,” Lee said, “I honestly thought we could have done better and it wasn’t the best representation of how good our performance can be.”

Although the band did go home with all captions and top scores, the amount of practice and time that they put in to make the show as best as they can has shown to be a little overwhelming for some of the students. Senior Valerie Cervantes shared how she felt about the rehearsals she had to put in almost every day of the week.

“I was pretty stressed out the week before,” Cervantes said. “Having to practice two and a half hours for three days a week. Not to mention the weather, but I guess it paid off with that dub we took.”