By Mike Hutchens, UC Schools Communications Director
Union City, Tenn.–It was truly a “golden” performance by the Union City High School band.
The Tornado marching band brought home essentially every bit of the hardware awarded at the West Tennessee Marching Band Championships at UT Martin Saturday, crowned overall Grand Champion among the 18 bands which participated.
UC, which performed first in the late afternoon, then in the finals in the late evening, was awarded Most Outstanding Visual Performance and Most Outstanding Musical Performance in addition to winning the top prize in the event.
The Golden Tornado group had earlier claimed first place in Color Guard and Percussion and was the No. 1 judged band in Class 3A in the preliminary competition.
Perhaps even more impressive was the fact that Saturday marked the first time Union City had put its entire show into the competition format.
“It was good to put the whole show out there,” director Jason Deem said. “We’d actually just learned the last 1 ½ minutes last week, and the kids performed like we’d been working on it six months.
“The judging community obviously liked it and I was really pleased.”
The outstanding performance added to an already-strong fall that has seen the Marching Tornadoes finish first in their divisions in competitions at Clarksville and Franklin, respectively.
The stages get bigger, however, as UC will compete in the Contest of Champions – considered the state championships of the band competition – next Saturday in Murfreesboro.
Union City is set to take the field at 2:40 p.m., one of 28 bands to compete.
“Every time you go to a different location, there’s a new set of people to compete against and a new day where you’ll have to meet the challenges of different weather conditions,” Deem added.
“With band, it’s a matter of physics. You have to adjust. And we will prepare the best we can this week.”
Union City will cap its competition season Nov. 9 in the BOA Grand National Championships in Indianapolis.
Photo by Mike Hutchens.
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