No promises!: My weekend, in two parts. Part the first:

Monday, October 09, 2006

My weekend, in two parts. Part the first:

Soo...Friday. Friday, Friday, Friday. PFHS had the week off. Just so you know (a little backstory), here's the stats for our district, copied directly from the local paper:

1-3A	W	L	W	L	PF	PA
Pine Forest	2	0	6	0	197	37
Washington	2	0	4	2	205	111
Pensacola High	1	1	5	1	165	102
Woodham	1	1	2	4	101	120
Gulf Breeze	0	2	1	5	121	170
West Florida Tech	0	2	0	6	6	274

So, PFHS is not doing too shabby a job this year. Currently one of two undefeated teams in the 2 county area, they're kicking booty and taking names. Now, for those of you that don't know, my band is made up of students from both Pine Forest and West Florida high schools. The schools are located next-door to each other...West Fl is a technical school, and as such does not have a band. (It's not supposed to have a football team, either, but that's a rant for another day.) The kids at WFHS that want to be in band can enroll in a class through their school, but meet with the kids from PFHS in the PFHS bandroom. They perform at PFHS games and such. It's an interesting situation, and they're VERY good about the whole thing. We perform at WFHS pep rallies, and played for their Homecoming court, too. Well. This week, PFHS didn't have a game, but WFHS did. We decided to play at their game. We can file this under "things that sound good on paper but don't work that well in reality". Shoo.

Scroll back up real quick and take a gander (if you haven't already) at the stats for WFHS. Yeah. Not so good. They've played (and lost) 6 games thus far, and have scored 6 points...all season. So we knew going in Friday that it was probably not going to be pretty, but hey, that's just fine. We're going to support our other school. Who did they play Friday, you ask? Catholic. Yes, Catholic. Anyone that's lived in P'cola for any amount of time can tell you that Catholic High has a history of awesome football teams. Considering their school population is at least half that of the public schools they play...and they don't have a 2nd or 3rd string to send in when the starters get tired...shoo!

My first question was, "Where on Earth are we going to sit?" Catholic's away stands, while VASTLY improved from the aluminum soccer stands from years past, are little things; about 6 or 7 seats high. My next question was, "What about uniforms?" Our new band uniforms say, "PFHS" on the chest. Plus, we had contest the following day...we decided not to wear uniforms that night. The kids wore their band shirt, black shorts, black socks, and their Bando shoes.

So we started out the night with some big changes from our normal routine.

It's a West Florida game.
The kids are NOT in uniform.
Our first contest of the year is the following day.
We performed the show pre-game (it was Senior night for Catholic).
The band was split into two sections in the stands; brass and percussion in one and woodwinds and guard in the other. Pit and the drum major were on the sidelines.
We couldn't rope off the band section and had people running/walking/stalking through the band all night long.

I learned a few years ago that change is not always a good thing, especially when working with a large group of kids. They stayed focused up until after we got in the stands and played the Star Spangled Banner (someone said that Catholic's trumpet players forgot to show up so they asked us to play it...take that with a grain of salt), and then it's like their brains went on vacation. These normally well-behaved band children weren't staying in their seats, they weren't paying attention, they were asking the most assinine questions...it was the most annoying night I've spent with them to date. I was horrified.

The game, as predicted, was a disaster. Any time Catholic came within 4 inches of the football, they scored a touchdown. West Florida was within 10 yards of scoring at one point...we told the kids that we'd play the "NFL on Fox" theme song if they scored, and no sooner had those words left our mouths than they lost the ball and Catholic ran 90 yards for a touchdown. ...sigh...

So...that was Friday. I got home around midnight and dozed off around 1. I woke up around 7:30 in time to realize that everyone in the house was already gone for the day. I got ready to go in relative peace and quiet, and then headed back up to the band room for another full day. That's another post, though, so go rest your eyes and I'll be back in a little bit.

posted by Jen @ 9:03 AM

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