The Eaton High School marching band competed in the Friendship Cup on Saturday, Sept. 29, achieving a 57.45, a score just 5.55 points short of Eaton’s best score ever at a marching band competition. Drum major Colton Sell (20) said, “We did a lot better than we actually expected to. We ended up making finals in the competition and moving up by two points in finals, which put us in seventh place while competing with 4A and 5A schools.” Sell said that the marching band is not expecting to get as high a score at their upcoming Legend competition. He said, “We’re expecting lower scores because Legend, historically, has graded harder, judged harder, than any other competition, but our goal is to maintain the same score [as the last competition] because that will put us even further into regionals and state.”

Band director Logan Doddridge said that the marching band’s show, “Embrace,” was not actually finished when they competed at the Friendship Cup competition. He said, “We kind of tweaked it so that we could get to the end musically, but we don’t have all of the visual things done yet.” But, Doddridge said that “this week we’re going to get every single detail completely finished.”

Low brass section leader Klara Cordova (20) said that without embracing each other within the marching band, their show “Embrace” would not really mean anything. “The marching band is a family,” Cordova said. “I know everybody says that we are, but we are a family because, even though we might get in fights and stuff, and there’s drama, we still learn to forgive and just love each other because, if we don’t, our show’s not going to work out. Our show is called Embrace, and if we don’t embrace each other, what’s the point of having the show?”

The EHS marching band’s next competition is their Legend competition, which will take place on Saturday, Oct. 6.