Southwest Band is still recruiting new members.

Band needs you!
By Jasmine Straw

Man-oh-man, is band getting going! This week in band the students finally met the rest of their coaches! They have their new color guard coach, their high brass coach, their percussion coach, their low brass coach, and their woodwind coach who are all eager to get to work.
After a quick meeting on the senior lawn, Ms. Clark suggested a fun game. Everyone got chairs and sat in a circle. The person in the middle of the circle had to say "I like everyone in this band, especially those who....." finishing the sentence with something. The ones that do or like whatever the person in the middle said had to scramble to find another seat. Rinse&Repeat. Everyone had a lot of fun with the game and learned a lot about each other like who's played Final Fantasy games or first person shooters, even who liked a member's "ghetto-ness".
Tuesday everyone got to work. Work means WORK! Wind insruments worked on their attention, faces, and marking time. Every little detail counts. Judges can be really picky at times, so working on the basics is the best and only place to start. All the while, drum line was working on their warm-ups and getting to know their coach.
To fix the member's attention stance, the coaches had them go to the stage to see if they could roll their hips out so that the hole you make with the floor and the arch of your back go away. This proved a difficult feat, but after a while everyone got it. They then moved to the wall, the deadly wall, for some much loved wall sits, because those are everyone's favorite, right? To end the day everyone 'high fived' each other and stayed in the band room to get their stuff or just hang out.
On to Thursday!
Thursday proved to be the best day. Practice started at 5:00, so a lot of the members went home to eat or just stayed around school to hang out. Once practice started, it was really fun. It started out a little weird: they were made to do breathing exercises from a video that was made who knows how long ago, but everyone had fun with the silly thing and even danced to the music that was in between sections. After this they got to playing music.
Outside was our wonderful color guard and drum line. Each practices their own things. Color with tosses and attention, which included getting to know each other, and making nicknames for some of the guard members. Drum line started with their warm-ups and how to move with the drums on them.
Once the three groups were done doing their own things, everyone marched out to the football field to do more work. Stretching was an odd activity, having to do stretches that actually stretched them! But people had fun with a little dancing and jerking. After stretching the drummers left the group once again to practice more, leaving the guard and band to their own devices. Marking time, marching and attention.
The drummers joined us again for an interesting and hard activity, marching in a straight line across the width of the football field. Many times they messed up in the beginning, but it for even more frustrating when they made it half way there only to be told to go back. Even though it was hard, it was really helpful and a lot of jokes were made.
To end the day and the week of practice, they ended with a quick game of freeze tag! Who said you couldn't have fun? NO ONE!

Within the three weeks of school, band has quadrupled in size, this includes band, color guard, and drum line. But that doesn't mean we're done!
If you're interested in joining any of the three, stop by the band room at any time throughout the day and talk to Ms. Clark!

"We es muy bueno" - Micheal, the woodwind coach.