Thursday, March 26, 2009

You May Now Take the Floor in State Finals Competition


Indoor Percussion is a competitive group which takes place in the winter. It is similar to marching band except it is just the percussion section. I got to participate in this group one year in high school and really enjoyed it. We ended up getting 4th place at state that year. My brother is now involved in the group, and he also likes it. I was excited when I saw that both the state prelims and state finals were during my spring break. This way, I was able to see him perform in his competition.

The morning of state prelims, I got up to get ready and felt really awful, so I decided not to go. I was pretty disappointed because I really wanted to go to this, but I knew that I wouldn't be able to handle going. I ended up going to the doctor so that I could go see him if they made it to state finals, which they did!

My dad was going to go with us to state finals, but he had to work that day. It ended up just being my mom, grandma, sister, and I who went to cheer on my brother. I had heard about their show, but I had not seen it yet. Now it was time for their last performance of the season. I couldn't wait to see what the show was going to be like.

The name of their show is Modern Times. For props, they had a giant switch and electrical outlet which had a plug going into it. To start off the show, they flipped the switch on. This gave them the energy to perform. Throughout the show, they had a girl who would jokingly turn the switch on and off to give them/take away their energy.

Halfway through the show, they yelled at this girl because everyone ran out of "energy." She then pointed to the switch to show them that she had not done anything. The pit section then had to play in order to recharge the drumline which had completely stopped played and fallen to the ground.

They all got recharged back to their high energy levels in order to finish off the show with high excitement. To end the show, they pulled the plug and dropped it to the ground to cut off all the energy supply. The crowd then cheered to show their appreciation of the performance and the performers.

Now we had to wait to go through the rest of the performances before awards. Luckily we were toward the end, so there weren't very many groups left to go. After the groups were done and the scores were calculated, it was time for all the groups to come back for an on-court retreat for awards.

The groups all lined up, and you could tell they were nervous. The places were announced in reverse order, so the longer they went without hearing their name, the better. Everyone wanted to be called last. One by one, they announced school names. We waited and waited to be called. In the end, they got 5th out of the 17 groups in their class. I thought that they had done really well and was proud of what they had accomplished. Of course, they thought they could have done better, but you will always have that.

I really enjoyed getting to go to state finals to see the different shows and support my brother. I wish I could have gone to prelims too, but at least I got to see his show once. Indoor Percussion will always be exciting to me since I actually got the opportunity to participate in it. I hope that my brother stays in it the next two years, so I will have a good excuse to go and watch these fun competitions.

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