The North Polk Band will be representing our school at upcoming marching band competitions. 

Although they did not have a competition season last year due to COVID, Band Director Brandon Weeks, shared “I think it will not have a huge impact on our competitive season. Understanding the timing of when to get things done in rehearsal is slightly off, and I foresee us having more first time performance jitters than we might normally have.”

This school year, the marching band will be competing in six contests in the next month and a half. Their first competition will be Sept. 25 at Pella High School. They will be competing against South Tama, West Liberty, Knoxville, Bonudrant-Farrar, Winterset, and Oskaloosa. 

To prepare for this coming competition season, they have had a rehearsal schedule to follow. They practice every first hour, every Tuesday through Thursday at 7 a.m., and the drumline and guard also practice on Monday nights.

When preparing for competitions, the band also has to transfer all their instruments to and from the contests. The band fits students, instruments, equipment, uniforms, and more onto three school buses, two suburbans that have trailers, a 28’ Penske Truck, and lastly one more truck hauling the ATV with a trailer. They typically arrive at the high school 4-5 hours before the contest to load and arrive at their contest 3- 4 hours early to be able to allow time to get dressed, put equipment together, warm-up, and then perform. Before they can leave to go home, the band has to stay until the awards ceremony and typically get home anywhere from 11 p.m. and 3 a.m. 

As the season goes on, the band will continue to grow and learn more from each other and competitions. Weeks shared, “Our band is working really hard and having a lot of fun. We always tell our students you can’t control the judges or how other bands perform. We can only control how we do, so let’s go out and do our best.”