POLYTECH MARCHING BAND

Band Director:  Eric Greco

Color Guard:  Katie Sprague

Drum Majors:  Becca Schwartz, Ashley Collison

Commanding Officer: John White

Assisting Officer: Matthew Freeman (Sr.), Branden Cessna (Jr.)

Trumpet soloist: Matthew Freeman

The 2004-2005 edition of the POLYTECH Marching Band went away from the ordinary themed shows of today’s marching bands.  Instead, we performed a show of variety with a little classic rock, a little jazz, and a little classical music.  Featuring trumpet soloist Matthew Freeman, the show began with Queen’s first number one hit: Bohemian Rhapsody.  We then featured our guard with Bob Haggart’s Big Noise from Winnetka.  Composing Big Noise from Winnetka for the Bob Crosby jazz orchestra, this jazz standard remains Haggart’s most popular.

Featuring some of the great classics, our closer began with the Chorale from Jupiter.  Jupiter is one of seven movements from British composer Gustav Holst’s most famous orchestral work – The Planets.  Featuring Matthew Freeman again on trumpet, Rimsky-Korsakov’s Russian Easter Overture brought our show to an exciting close.

With (a POLYTECH record) five Tournament of Bands competitions in the schedule, we set out to see how well the three weeks of band camp really went.  After a few dress rehearsals (aka - football games), we were ready to begin. 

We started the season at Lake Forest (Felton, DE).  With seven bands in our group (Group I), we knew there would be tough competition.  With 3/4 of the show completed, we finished 5th out of 7 with a score of 66.00. 

After a two week break (and two more dress rehearsals), we headed up to Frawley Stadium - home of the Wilmington Blue Rocks - for William Penn High School's TOB.  With most of the closer finished, we performed first on the show - the toughest challenge yet!  We finished 3rd in our group.  Although we "park and blew" the last part of the closer, we improved to 68.60. 

We took a week off to enjoy Homecoming, but come October 23, it was back to work.  For the second year in a row, the crazy band director scheduled two... yes, TWO competitions in one day!  We started the day at Queen Anne County High School in Centreville, MD.  Although we finished 4th  in our group, we broke the 70-point mark with a 71.50.  Moving on to our evening performance, Kent Island High School in Stevensville, MD, we had a tough act to follow.  Group I was placed after Group IV; we had to follow our Delaware neighbor, Caesar Rodney High School Marching Band.  With that pressure, we finished 5th in our group with a score of 71.15... you have to love those judges!

Our season ended on what could have been a bad situation.  With twelve students not coming (either out of town or they though Halloween was more important...), we traveled south to Salisbury, MD, for Parkside High School's Delmarvacade of Bands.  After letting the judges know we had twelve holes, we went on to do our best performance yet!  Placing 5th in our group that night, we finished with our season high score of 75.05!

Overall, I would say we had a pretty successful year!  We our enjoying a nice break from an extremely busy fall, but we will be back.  Stay tuned for next year's excitement....