Band scored high ratings in its UIL Concert & Sight-Reading competitions Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday.

“UIL was a great success, all four of the bands that participated received the highest awards possible, which is called superior, or ones, from the judges,” associate band director Zach Anderson said. “I think that all the bands did a really great job in preparing, and set everybody up for a really great performance.”

The competition is the ultimate test for band to showcase the culmination of their practice throughout the year.  

“UIL concert and sightreading is the band version of he state assessment, where we are judged on their mastery throughout the year, and six judges, and listened to us play our stage performance and our sight reading performance and all bands receive what’s called a sweepstakes,” Anderson said. “That means that it’s a superior rating on the stage and in the sight reading room.”

Anderson credits the outstanding score to the students dedication to the music.

“I think that all the bands did a really great job in preparing, and set everybody up for a really great performance,” Anderson said. “I think that the work ethic that the students demonstrated leading up to the performance, was really a big attribute to their success, and all they hard work they put in leading up to that.”

Junior Shelby Pybus felt like the performance was strong in many aspects, but the competition wasn’t without errors.

“I feel like our performance on stage was good, and we put a lot of dedication and time into it and it’s turned out pretty well, some things didn’t come out as well as we hoped it would,” Pybus said. “Sight reading did not go how we wanted to. We were going on really strong, but we had trouble with the key signature, and we almost got a two, but overall our tone and dynamics were really strong, so at least we have that down.”

Pybus saw that the constant preparation and rehearsal put the band in a good position to succeed at UIL.

“We had sectionals every week, once a week in the morning before school, and after school,” Pybus said. “We had a lot of intense rehearsals everyday in class, ands its a process we’ve been practicing since middle school.”

Hours of practice have been put in by every student in band, and senior Josh Lee feels that the performance represented the program well.

“I thought it was a good performance, I feel like our score really reflected the work we put into it, and how hard we tried for the performance, so I think it was a good performance,” Lee said. “I think we definitely got the results that we wanted and that should have got, based on the time we’ve put in.”