Current Schedule

We had another excellent week last week - we got started on the clean-up of our Holiday Parades piece (Christmas Promenade - we’ve played it for 34 consecutive years) and then for the first time ever we performed it before Thanksgiving and at a football game. Thanks for the great job at the Elite 8 Football Playoff game on Saturday and with our win we are just one more win from playing in the STATE CHAMPIONSHIP 4A FOOTBALL GAME at UW’s Husky Stadium on December 7th. I know it’s unusual to have a performance on Thanksgiving weekend, especially a HOME GAME at Sunset Stadium, but here we are and it’s obviously a REALLY giant moment in Sumner HS History! I always talk to Coach Ross when the football team comes out (while the Band is playing the Fight Song in the tunnel lines) and Saturday night he asked me: “We’re going to win this game and is the Band going to be there next Saturday for the State Semi-Final Game?” and of course I said “Absolutely!”. I can tell you this that there hasn’t been a bigger home game of any type of sports in the 35 years I’ve been at Sumner HS so I hope you understand the magnitude of this event coming-up in 6 days and hopefully you can be there. The game is at 4:00PM so we’ll follow our regular FB Game performance-schedule:

• 12:00PM Band Room open to move equipment/stands/podiums to Sunset Stadium
• 1:15PM Hats-On (baseball hats again) PG & HT rehearsal starting in the Courtyard
• 2:00PM Meal Break (Late-Lunch/Early Dinner - whatever . . .)
• 3:00PM Full-Group in-uniform in the Courtyard for Warm-Ups
• 3:30PM March to Sunset Stadium - Pregame (CP again as our track-lap piece)
• 4:00PM STATE SEMI-FINAL FOOTBALL GAME AGAINST CHIAWANA HS (they are from Pasco and are coming all the way across the State. We are the #2 seeded/rated football team in the playoffs and they are #3 so it’s going to be an INCREDIBLY BIG GAME)

After we win the game we’ll be making plans for our first-ever State Championship MB performance at UW’s Husky Stadium on December 7th AFTER the Sumner Holiday Parade. The Sumner Parade begins at 2:30PM and after we get done we’ll return to SHS and get ready to go to Seattle and perform at the 7:00PM Championship Game. Should we lose the Semi-Final Game on Saturday we’ll still be performing the Puyallup and Enumclaw Holiday Parades after the Sumner Parade. By the way, Chiawana HS has a Band - a good Band, a VERY GOOD Band, as they WON the Overall Championship at the Yakima Harvest Marching Band Festival this year on October 19th - the same day we were at Tenino, with just about the same scores we had at Auburn (they had 82 points while we had 81). I hope they bring their Band and maybe both groups could perform at halftime, but we’ll have to see if they’re going to make the long trip on a holiday weekend as well . . . Anyway, we’ve got a couple of busy weeks coming-up: we’re going to read-thru our Holiday Bowl music for the first time on Monday and Tuesday, as we’ve got just over a month to learn, clean-up and memorize a 4-page music show that we’ll be performing at the Bowl Game halftime on December 27th (the second day of our trip) and the Jazz Ensembles will be rehearsing for the only time this week on Tuesday morning for our upcoming 2 performances on Saturday December 14th at the SHS Community Holiday Dinner and the White River HS Evening of Jazz. It’s an exciting time coming-up for us but we’ve handled all of the challenges we’ve been given all year and I know we’ll continue to do a great job. Listen to the attached audio of the Holiday Bowl Music and start to get used to things when you get the music on Monday - work hard over the 2 days we’ve got this week and then enjoy a great Thanksgiving and hopefully we see you on Saturday. Here’s our next 2 weeks of activities: