Aurora band earns top awards at parade and field show
The Aurora Marching Huskies made a break for success at the 82nd annual Harvest of Harmony in Grand Island on Saturday.
The Huskies returned home Saturday afternoon having once again earned trophies for first place and Best Class A/B Band for the morning parade and another superior from the afternoon field show.
Band directors Dan Sodomka and Kate Metzger told the students during their Monday morning class that the band had scored a 96 for their parade performance and an 82 overall on the field.
“It was a great day,” Metzger said. “It’s always fun to watch them step up and do what you know they’re capable of. That’s what’s fun, because we know what they’re capable of.”
The scores the band received at its first competition of the season were an eye-opener for students as to the current status of their show.
“It’s a work-in-progress,” Sodomka said. “The scores were in general where we thought they should be. Some of them were a little higher. Some might have been just a little bit lower, but for the whole overall average they were pretty close to where they need to be this time of year.”
Sodomka said the conditions for the parade were perfect for the attending bands. Temperatures ranged in the 60s and 70s helping the band maintain a steady pace from its position in the parade.
“We were very fortunate we were able to keep going, do our thing and not have the constant stops and starts,” he said.
The Harvest of Harmony parade had been a much anticipated event for several band students including junior drum major Savanna James.
“I think there’s always ups and downs in parades and you just have to be flexible and know how to take it and adjust,” James shared with Grand Island reporter Jeff Bahr. “I think we did really well doing that.”
Senior drum major Jorja Pohlmeier told the journalist that she enjoyed performing in the parade due to the sense of community and enjoyed “getting ready together and the excitement for what the day has to come.”
“I agree with that,” James said. “Along with that, I really enjoy listening to the cadences while marching under the underpass. I feel like that’s a really cool part of the parade.”
Metzger said the band members took energy from the attending crowds as they made their way down Third Street.
“The way they’re disciplined and the way they do things, people notice,” she stated. “They go, ‘Oh, that’s a good band there,’ and they applaud, they yell and that gets the kids a little more pumped up the next time. I would say they’re a crowd favorite when they go down the street.”
Later on in the afternoon, the Aurora band was among eight marching bands to compete in the Class B field shows at Grand Island Senior High’s Memorial Stadium.
Upon entering the field simulated jail bars were propped onto the field and the color guard and drum majors had changed from their parade attire to prison jumpsuits and police uniforms.
“Once (the drum majors) saw what the color guard was going to be wearing, I think they were pretty excited,” Sodomka said. “They know now that it’s just the exclamation point to the show. It just solidifies everything we’re doing.”
The Huskies new show for this season, “Breakout,” carries the theme of a movie jail break with prisoners doing everything in their power to escape from the police.
With additional technology that further immersed the audience into the story, the overall action-packed performance brought a new sense of pride and determination from the band.
“I think having that success on Saturday, they bought into the whole new show idea,” Sodomka commented. “I think they like the new show idea, but seeing that it’s scoring well proves that we are on the right track. Now it’s a matter of taking what we have and just making it as good as we possibly can.”
Along with the overall musical and visual aspect of the show, director noted the individual performances of the students were just as crucial to their success.
“With them coming off the field talking about things like ‘Oh, I should have done this better,’ or ‘I messed this up,’ they’re starting to realize, ‘Okay, the individual aspect of it is huge,’ and we’re going to keep building on that, because the higher and better the individual scores are, everything else is going to soar as well.”
Sodomka said that reality was driven home when students got to see the recording of their Saturday performance.
“It starts to put things in perspective,” he said. “They start to see things that we talk about with the slides, the toes up, the body posture, how this is all sounding or the same volume level. This week is going to be huge on adding a couple visuals, trying to add some musical differences and see if we can’t up our scores a little bit from where we were this week.”
Both band directors said they were pleased with the band’s first competition and are eager to see the students continue to grow.
“(We) basically told them that we have a great start, but we’ve got to keep building upon what we have,” Sodomka said. “Every week we have a lot of work to do and they saw and heard that there are still points to be gained yet.”
“We’re stressing continually, ‘Don’t settle,’” Metzger said. “There’s always something you can do better.”
As the band prepares for LINKS and for the state marching competition in Kearney, Sodomka said they are excited to bring the full show back to Aurora.
“Right now, they have only seen snippets,” he said. “They have seen us perform it once, not in uniform, so they don’t know about the costumes and I think once everybody sees it, I think they’re going to be really surprised and enjoy it.”
Both Sodomka and Metzger expressed their gratitude to the community for supporting the students throughout the day at Harvest of Harmony.
“We appreciate all the community members, parents, grandparents and everybody else that came to support and do the shout outs, the clapping, whistling and everything else,” Sodomka commented. “It truly makes a difference in the way the kids perform, because when you know there’s people there for you, it makes you give just a little bit more.
The Husky band will be competing next at the LINKS Marching Contest in Lincoln on Saturday with the band taking the field at 2:45 p.m.