That Rain Isn't Going to Stop the Ferndale Golden Eagles from Their Practice!

Rain, rain, go away and please don’t come back… at least not on the days we have marching band!

While we’ve had our share of beautiful weather, it seems that every little cell, or big cell, of rain that comes our way happens right in the middle of marching band. Last Monday we got soaked as we spent two hours working in the steady rain. Friday we got ourselves AND the freshly cleaned uniforms wet at the beginning of the football game, which got delayed because of the rain. (Monday) night there was this teeny tiny green and yellow cell of rain, which headed right for us. It was like the sky turned the heavy massage showerhead on full blast and pelted us for at least 10 minutes. I think it may have been the wettest I ever got at a marching band function. It was so bad that we couldn’t even continue working and we just had to take shelter. The beauty of it though was the rainbows and the sky colors that followed. It ALMOST made it worth it… I guess! Thankfully we have all of our drill and music in plastic pages, but my new stuff got soaked. I stuffed it into my folder anyway… maybe I’ll start a science experiment in my drill binder.

We got a lot accomplished this past week, including finishing movement 4 (despite the rain). There’s now only about a minute and a half to put on to our show, so we’re feeling pretty good about where we are. Our first competition is in two Saturdays. We have never had our show done for that, nor will we this time. The next two weeks will be dedicated to cleaning what we have now.

Our retractable belts started coming in and being fitted to the kids. Saturday will be really interesting because we will start rehearsing with those on. I will be sure to get some pictures of that! I’m a little nervous that the kids won’t be able to handle it, and a huge element of our show won’t work. But I know we will all be working hard to make sure that doesn’t happen.

The football game I mentioned was the first time the kids were in their formal uniforms. I always love that day because all the new kids and new junior drum major get to wear the Ferndale Golden Eagle Marching Band uniform (or drum major uniform) for the first time. The history of marching band comes from the military, so we try to model how we handle the uniform as the military does. Of course we couldn’t wear our plumes (feathers in the helmets) because of the rain. Those are about $30 a piece, and when they get wet, they get very messed up.

We had a car wash on Sunday and it was pretty successful. So if you came out to it, thank you so much! We think we will continue that fundraiser in the future. It’s also a fun time for the kids.

We don’t have any performances this weekend, which is good and bad. Good that we get lots of time to just polish, but sometimes bad because the kids can get complacent about what they’re doing if they don’t have an audience. Hopefully adding our belts this weekend will prevent that from happening!

So hopefully this rain will let up a bit. Snow would be better… Yes, yes it would.