Since practice makes perfect, Fowler and Vandeventer Middle School students played their UIL music here on campus Thursday to get feedback on their performances before competition day. 

“What we do is, we have a concert and we kind of go through the same system as they would be [using] at UIL – with judges – so that way they can get feedback on where they’re at at the moment and they can fix anything they need to fix before the actual UIL,” band director Ana Hinojosa said. 

Pre-UIL events have been hosted on campus for years, and each year, performing on campus provides one particular advantage. 

“We do this event at Liberty so that the students from Fowler can experience a concert at both Lebanon Trail High school and Liberty High school [within one] year since they are a split feeder to both campuses,” Fowler Middle School band director Jenny Denis said. “Also, Liberty is known for having a sound acoustically engineered stage, so it has one of the best sounds you can get in the district.” 

To Vandeventer Middle School 8th grader Alisa Tkachenko, performing this evening was a proud moment. 

“Something I gained from this experience was the knowledge of how it’s going to be on the real stage,” Tkachenko said. “We have been practicing so hard for a long while, and finally experiencing a version of how it’s gonna go showed me that we could do it. We blended smoothly together between each piece and quickly fixed the little errors to make our performance the best one yet.” 

Along with the satisfaction of performing after days of work came a unique learning experience. 

“Performing at Liberty [was] a lot more professional compared to performing at Vandeventer,” Vandeventer Middle School student 8th grader Ryo Amemiya said. “I feel like that prepares middle school students to perform as a high schooler in the future, [and] I also think [this was a] good opportunity to get to know how the high school band program works.” 

Transitioning from middle school to high school might be something to adjust to, so this pre-UIL is more than just a practice event; it’s a chance for students to start feeling comfortable on campus, as many of them are future redhawks. 

“They get a feel for the school, a feel for the kids, for the directors,” Hinojosa said. “And then also like, for the facilities, because the biggest thing and the biggest fear for incoming high schoolers is that they get scared since it’s a different campus. They’ve been at their campus for three years. So, this is a good opportunity for them to kind of start feeling like this is home.”