Palisades Marching Band Marches into their Competitive Season

by Matt McAnally

The Palisades Marching Band had its first competition on Saturday, September 27, scoring a 72.2 and placing 4th out of 5 competing bands.

Throughout the season, up until their first competition, they have already been facing many challenges. Firstly, 11 out of 18 members (over 60%) are new to marching band playing for the first time this year, and even some returning members are trying new instruments and moving from the front ensemble to marching, not to mention the director also being new, never having worked with this band before. Secondly, the band experienced a technical issue with one of their two speakers being completely broken when the time came to perform.

Despite these challenges, the band is still performing better than last year at the same point in the season. When interviewed, Mr Westenberger, the band director, said that the band played and looked the best they have throughout the entire season so far, playing and marching better than in any rehearsal. When asked what could have gone better, Mr. Westenberger mentioned the speaker malfunction, as well as the fourth and final closing song, which was still missing from the show on the competition day.

Since the first competition, the fourth song has been introduced, the speaker has been fixed, and extra visual elements have been added. Along with this, the storyline of the show has been adjusted, which is where the band lost many of its points in the previous competition. With these adjustments, the band’s score increased for their competition on Saturday, October 11 at Pennridge, scoring 77.85.

Regardless, Mr. Westenberger simply hopes to consistently improve the band’s score and stay above the score from last year. In relation to the band, the most important part of the future competitions, according to Mr. Westenberger, apart from the performance itself, is the warm-ups. With emphasized importance for warm-ups lasting over an hour before their performance, the band will be ready to play their best on the field for the judges.

Eventually, by the championships on November 1st, he hopes to at least break 80 points, which the band hasn’t been able to do since 2022 when it scored 88.195 with its show Ritual. In this large-scale competition, the band will face off against about 25 other bands in the Independence A division for bands with 0 to 35 students. As the band continues to practice, with constant improvement and dedication, this goal will hopefully come closer and closer to a reality.