AHS Band Weekly Update - September 19, 2022

Greetings, Eagle Family! It’s the week of September 19th! Another busy week of band! Let’s go over the big items now.

Percussion Contest Results: this year, the Atascocita High School band drumline and percussion section traveled to the Aldine ISD Percussion Contest and Clinic. There were over 20 ensembles from various schools in Houston in attendance. This was the band’s first time in school history to attend a percussion competition, and there they tied for 5th place. We are very excited for the hard work that the kids put into their performance, and we are super thankful for our guest clinician Lamar Burkhalter who comes in weekly and works with them. We are proud of our percussionists!

Football Game Friday: It’s a home game! In fact… it’s our HOMECOMING! The itinerary will be similar to all other home games, except our performance will be at the end of the football game instead of at half-time. Our half-time will be dedicated to homecoming court festivities. At the end of the game, we have been given permission to use the field for additional time again by our amazing athletic directors in administration, so we anticipate that we will take extra time after the performance to run through a few sections before we go home. This time on the field is some of the most valuable time we have as a team, so we are going to definitely do that.

Monday Rehearsals: That starts today, and we will go from 3:45 to 5:15. It’s a shortened rehearsal from all of the other days to stay in compliance with UIL’s eight-hour rule in which marching bands do not exceed 8 hours of practice time in a week. These Mondays are to make up for the many hours lost in the beginning of the year due to lightning strikes, and the directors and leadership team believe that we will catch up to where we need to be with these rehearsals.

First Contest: Our first marching band contest is in TWO WEEKS! Next Saturday, October 1st, the Atascocita High School band will travel to Galena Park ISD for their annual marching festival. Our performance time is in the afternoon, and we are currently working on an itinerary to give out to parents. We anticipate that we will be arriving at the school in the morning to do a rehearsal run through, do lunch at the school before we leave, perform there, and then load up equipment and head back home.

Grades: The eligibility report will be going out Monday, today. We will be notifying all band students of their eligibility status. If you failed a course for this progress report, then you will be ineligible until the next reporting period. In other words, if you fail a course, you will be unable to attend anymore football games and are going to be out of participating in any marching contests until you regain eligibility. Sadly, that regain day is the day before UIL Region Marching Contest in October, so that means you will be unable to participate in that one as well.

• If you have any questions regarding eligibility and UIL, we encourage parents to check out the UIL website and its information on a state law called “No Pass No Play” which simply means, if you don’t pass your classes, then you don’t get to play.
  
• That includes football, soccer, band, cheerleading, essentially anything that deals with UIL or anything ran in accordance to UIL eligibility standards (that’s TMEA region auditions, etc.)
  

Booster Meeting: Today Monday, September 19th, is our monthly Band Parent Booster Meeting. We have our Booster Board meeting which will be at 6:30, and then we invite any and all parents to attend our monthly band parent meeting at 7:00PM to discuss the major happenings in our program. The directors will present a few items that we know we will need parent help with, so parents please attend tonight’s meeting in the AHS band hall.

That wraps it up for this week! Things are going really fast now! If you have any questions, please email me at [email protected]. 

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