‘Ra’ completed his final trip around the sun during the marching band’s championships, and his return was brighter than ever.

  The band placed third out of seven at the competition in Downingtown, where all of the surrounding bands of the area gathered to perform their shows one last time and receive their final ranking for the season, and band director Christian Poole couldn’t have been happier with the results.

  “…The band played really well, marched well; it was a great show,” said Poole. “It was the highest score we’ve ever had…we came in third place; it’s a great placement.”

  For the past few months, the band has been hard at work putting together ‘Ra,’ a show about the famous sun god hailing from Egyptian mythology, according to junior and mellophone player Addie Achterberg.

  “…We start and end in this circle because the whole thing is Ra just has this endless cycle of his existence because he just goes over the sun…and it’s sort of his journey, I guess, across the sky and in the water and in the underworld,” Achterberg said. “First, we learn the music and the drills…which is where we move [on the field], and then we have to memorize music and put it with the drill…later in the season, we start cleaning, which is where we go back to the other sets that we haven’t run since we learned them and make sure they’re all perfect.”

  On top of the practice done earlier in the season, senior drum major Joe Speir details the extra practice that must be done for a competition week, especially one as important as the last.

  “…The week before, we usually have a 3-5:30 practice after school and then we have a 6-9 practice as well, but this week we did two 6-9 practices,” said Speir. “We run over the show; we hit big impact points.”

  The competition day itself is full of even more rehearsal and preparation, as described by Poole.

  “…About four hours in advance [we do] a lot of on-field work, mostly a lot of marching earlier in the day, and then we start playing later on,” Poole said. “…We try to save our chops, and then we’re ready to go.”

  After all was said and done, the band marched its way up to the open class, the most prestigious in the Yankee division of the competition, and clinched a score of 96.4/100, one that prompted minimal criticism from the judges, Speir noted.

  “I think this time, we got more of positive criticism,” said Speir. “I know in the visual judges, we just got more of [criticism about our] angles…but it’s all very small details now, because we’re so rehearsed with the show, and we know what we’re doing, and I think we do it pretty well.”

  Achterberg shares the same confidence in the band’s abilities to excel in the competition circuit.

  “[Our conductor] Mr. Presley keeps saying, ‘If another band beats us, good for them,’ because we’re doing really well as a band,” Achterberg said.

  If ‘Ra’ skyrocketed the band to this much success, it looks like all they can do is fly higher – once the sun rises on the season again next summer, that is.