Last weekend, October 3, the Oxford High School band competed at Louisburg placing fourth overall and color guard placing 2nd.

“As soon as they called out that we were fourth, everyone was super pumped,” Junior Drum Major Michaela Spillers said.

“I feel great about how hard the kids have worked and that they were able to execute many of the shows details at a high level,” Band Director Mel Morse said. “We have many things to work on to improve but it was by far our best performance of the year thus far.”

The theme of the OHS band’s show this year is gangster jazz. The show is centered around the 20’s and 30’s gangster mafia.  It contains sounds of gunshots and police sirens, noises created by the drumline and percussions as well as 8 foot polls used by the color guard to “break the band out of jail.”

“The whole concept of our show gives us a lot of potential to metal,” Spillers explained.

The band was scored the lowest on visual and the highest on music.

“We were scored the lowest on visual because we spent too much time on other things that we didn’t add anymore visuals, but we are in the process of adding visual later,” Spillers explained.

Overall, Morse feels that the band’s main area of improvement is the performance itself.

“The band need to work on performing,” Morse explained. We tend to just go through the motions and do them well but there is an energy missing and if we did have that performance emotion we would take things to a different level.”

However, Morse feels that if the band improves on this aspect, they have a shot at placing in the top 6 of 5A bands at the state Marching Championship.

“Our goal would be to continue to be the best version of ourselves and improve daily. If at the end of the season we are happy with our growth and the end product of the show I will be very pleased,” Morse said.  “If we do those things I believe we can earn a superior rating, or even break into the top 6 of 5A bands in the state.”

The Oxford Color Guard is similarly working hard  for their upcoming state championship placing third at Louisberg and 6th at their most recent competition(Mississippi Invitational).

“The guard is working hard these next few days to improve our routine and do the best we can at state championships,” Junior Bhakti Patel said.

The State Marching Competition will begin on October 24 in Pearl, Ms.