Marching Bands Will Battle It Out

Sat., Oct. 10, 1998

By Marny Lombard marnyl@spokesman.com (509) 927-2166

Spokane Valley high school bands will vie in the Battle of the Bands this weekend at Joe Albi Stadium.

The smallest of the Valley bands, West Valley High School, will perform first, at 9:45 a.m. West Valley’s band, under director Jim Loucks, will play songs from 1945. The band has about 90 students, and its aim is simple: to build on its success.

“We competed last week in Pasco and were very successful,” Loucks said. “We want to make even more improvements.”

University High School’s band, with 85 students, is on at 11:30 a.m.

“Our philosophy this year is to go out and perform, be entertaining for the crowd and have fun,” said U-Hi band director Keith Nielsen. “If we win, that’s great. If we don’t but we have fun, that’s what counts for us.”

East Valley High School’s band comes on at 12:45 p.m.

With about 120 students in band, director Cal Anderson said “we just want to do a really good job and impress a lot of people, and just knock a lot of people out of their seats.”

At 3:45 p.m., comes Central Valley High School’s band, which won several regional awards last year. The marching band and color guard have about 140 students. Director Kent Meredith said the biggest change is a jump in quality of the color guard training, due to a new instructor.

CV’s band is playing music from “Riverdance,” the Irish musical. “We want to make that come to life, make people feel the emotion and spirit of that music. The competitive side of things tends to take care of itself,” Meredith said.

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