Surging to third

The Marching Patriots were sixth in preliminaries.

They had finished behind Anderson and Richmond on the final weekend before the state fair. They had traded off with Centerville, falling behind the Blue Regiment one night before beating them the next.

On the big track, though, under the night lights, their performance came shining through.

The Jay County High School Marching Patriots surged all the way up to third place in the finals at the Indiana State Fair competition Friday, closing out a thrilling Band Day during which they won the Class 3A percussion caption award.

    Keira Corwin (right) laughs alongside fellow front ensemble percussionist Trenton Franks while warming up for the preliminary round of the Indiana State Fair Band Day competition. The front ensemble added some visuals into their performance for the state fair. JCHS won the Class 3A percussion caption award for the fourth time in the last decade. It had also won in 2015, 2019 and 2021.

 

“We’re really pleased,” said JCHS band director Chuck Roesch, whose band was coming off of a seventh-place finish in 2022. “The kids are ecstatic.

“It’s fun watching them get jittery every time they announce another name and it’s not yours. That’s one of the jobs I get as a director … That was really special.”

The climb to third place was as close as close could be, as Jay County deadlocked with Roesch’s former school — Centerville — for the No. 3 score at 85.925 points. The tiebreaker in such situations is general effect, with the Marching Patriots’ score of 35 lifting them to third place as the Blue Regiment scored 34.1.

JCHS ended up trailing only Kokomo, which scored 90.725 to close out an undefeated summer by repeating as the state fair champion, and Muncie Central at 89.725. (Kokomo’s win came as it took three of the other four caption awards — auxiliary, visuals and general effect.)

    Caleb Garringer performs alongside his fellow mellophones Saturday at the Indiana State Fair.

 

The group that had been tightly packed for most of the summer remained so, with Anderson (85.525) and Richmond (85.475) both less than half a point behind Jay County and Centerville. Winchester was seventh at 81.075.

The percussion caption award was the third in the last four Indiana State Fair competitions for the Marching Patriots. They also won in 2019 and 2021. (The 2020 show was called off because of the coronavirus pandemic.)

“It still gives me chills to even think about it,” said percussion instructor Mitch Snyder, whose group also won the caption in 2015. “It’s such a difficult thing. It’s so difficult.”

Centerville was the Class 2A champion, winning caption awards for music, visuals and general effect. Randolph Southern took the Class 1A title as it won all of the captions with the exception of percussion (Monroe Central).

 Saxophone players Dougie Cox (foreground) and Audrey Muhlenkamp (background) march side-by-side during the afternoon show.

 

The Marching Patriots’ victorious percussion group is made up of the front ensemble — Megan Faller, Keira Corwin, Elijah Howell, Annie Spencer, Rhoen Brown, Charley Bye, Trenton Franks, Sabrina Jones and Silas Schmidt — instructed by Christian Ford, and Snyder’s marching group of snares, bass drums and quads — Destiny McManus, Gabe Pinkerton, Erin Aker, MacKenzie Weesner, Nathan Lothridge, Gavin Young, Dominic Steveson, Jase Walter, Reece Leavell, Austin Jellison and Jacey Smith.

Drum major Mackenzie Brown specifically pointed out the front ensemble when considering what went well about the band’s afternoon performance.

“A lot of visual things looked really good,” she said. “Our pit (front ensemble) looked really good when they did their visual moves.”

    Senior Audrey Hummer of the Marching Patriots’ color guard keeps her eye on her flag during a toss as part of Jay County’s performance Friday afternoon.

 

Those visual moves — new twists that Franks had hinted at during an interview following the band’s preview show Tuesday — involved rotating positions while waving arms and showing some expressive personality in the process.

Leavell said the preliminary performance started off a bit shaky for him and his fellow percussionists. But they bounced back at the end, performing what he said was “by far” their best closer.

“Everything just lined up,” he said. “The notes were clean. The louds were loud, the quiets were quiet. It’s what we had been working toward all year.”

Snyder attributed the caption award to growth.

“I measure the year on the growth from start to finish,” he said. “And our warm-up today, I told them, was just a true testament to how far we came. Seven weeks ago, there’s no way we could have done that.”

 Roesch felt the Marching Patriots’ afternoon performance was “electric.” He called it their best of the summer.

Brown said she agreed with that assessment, but clearly thought they were capable of more.

“We felt pretty good,” she said. “It was a really good run for us.”

Roesch also felt his group could take another step. He challenged them to do so.

He talked to them about poise and professionalism, about limiting distractions, about locking in.

“They were confident and they were focused in,” said Roesch. “But they weren’t uptight. They were loose. And that’s a great spot to be in.”

“I thought they did a really great job of just handling the long day. I just can’t speak enough about the effort from these kids for the entire summer.”

Jay County High School band director Chuck Roesch gets the Marching Patriots’ attention during warm-up prior to the preliminary performance.