Band has their second competition of the year, the Carrollton-Farmers Branch Tournament of Champions, this weekend on October 7.

The band previously scored sixth in the 5A school category and 18th overall at their competition in South Lake last weekend. They’re now looking to improve their scores in this upcoming competition.

“We always say that we kinda take the first competition as the warm up one, and then the second one we always bring the A-game,” Assistant Director of Bands Tyler Elvidge said. “For this week specifically, we’ve had some guest clinicians come in, we had an FISD band showcase Tuesday night, and we got judges tapes that gave us some comments and feedback as far as what we can do to better enhance the show and make it a little bit more competitive.”

Students have been attending practices throughout the week and will also attend a three-hour practice at Memorial Stadium to prepare for the competition.

“I think this competition’s gonna be a lot better than the last one,” senior Cameron Wolfe said. “We got to see the video from our last contest and see that not everything was where we wanted it to be, so that’s made kids work harder on their own time and in rehearsal. We’ve made tremendous amounts of progress this week, and it’s gotten so much better in just a little bit of time.”

Color guard will also be accompanying the band as a visual aspect of the performance. They will receive separate scores as well as their collective score with the band.

“For guard, we’ve been practicing every single day from 4:40pm to 7pm Monday through Friday,” sophomore Lauren Hazzard said. “We have a lot of new people, so the competition part of it isn’t new anymore, so they’re not gonna be as nervous.”