Heading to the WBA Finals

Tomorrow morning we'll launch out of here early for the first of four 500 mile drives we'll make in the next week. Tomorrow's drive will take us to Pleasant Hill, CA for the Western Band Association State Championships where the Mission Viejo High School Band and Color Guard are among the favorites for the State title. If you're a regular reader here you'll know that my son is a senior and a featured soloist in this year's competition program, and since this is his last performance in the marching band, we had to be there.

Preliminary competition is on Saturday with the finals on Sunday. Mission's biggest challenger will be perennial champ James Logan High School, which has won the previous 4 years. Mission's last championship came in 2003 when my daughter was a freshman flute player in the band.

I think they've got a real shot at the title this year. The program is very exciting, with lots of dramatic moments and some incredibly intricate drill movements. If you haven't seen the video of this year's show, you can see it here.

One benefit of having the finals in Pleasant Hill (near Concord) is that it's only about an hour's drive from my daughter's college, so our first stop will be there to meet her for lunch and some needed shopping. We'll head over to the prelims later that evening, and on Sunday we'll go north again to pick her up and take her with us to the finals show.

Since a great deal of time will be spent traveling this weekend, blogging will proceed at a much less frenetic pace. My online time will be pretty severely limited for the next three days. I will be posting the prelim and finals scores on Saturday and Sunday evening, and may post via cellphone from the stadium as events warrant.

And now, a bonus video. This past Monday night the band did their final night rehearsal at the high school, and that's always a spectator sport in itself. The kids dress in old uniforms or other "interesting", shall we say, ways for the final run of the show. My son didn't have an old uniform to wear, so one of the color guard girls brought him an old outfit of hers. When we arrived at the stadium my folks asked me "why is your son wearing a dress?", the question no father wants to hear. Given it was the last Monday night rehearsal, I wasn't all that shocked. He made quite a fetching figure out there.

I decided to shoot video of the last run, focusing just on his performance. It will give you an idea of just how intricate these shows are and how much the kids have to remember for each nearly 9 minute show. The music came through great as well. With his permission I've posted it below: