Marching band competitors worthy of better coverage

I’m writing to express my disappointment in the uneven coverage of the wonderful Pacific Northwest Marching Band Competition held last weekend (Oct. 11) at Joe Albi Stadium.

In the Sunday Spokesman-Review (Oct. 12) there was a general article, interviewing and picturing band members from University and explaining what marching bands do. That’s great (Central Valley was featured last year).

The problem? There were no results from the night before. That’s like waiting to hear a sports score and no one tells you who won until five days later.

Then, in the Thursday Voice (Oct. 16) I thought maybe scores, awards and other local bands would be featured. Nope. Again, more general text, five pictures of the same band as Sunday, only one picture of a Yakima band, and a couple paragraphs on general standings.

No photos of Central Valley or Mead? No Mt. Spokane or Cheney? All four bands are placing at the top of their divisions this year, claiming numerous caption awards, and there was little mention of any of them. Your photographer should’ve stayed for more than one 10-minute preliminary performance and taken more pics of different bands in the evening. He missed the best part: finals and the spectacular, colorful retreat at the end by all bands participating.

Also, it would have been nice to see actual scores and caption awards listed along with the divisional standings. Sectional awards are a big deal to bands which might not shine overall. (They’re available at www.spokanethunder.org).

CV and Mead have won the top two spots two weeks in a row (at Albi and in Pasco at the Cavalcade of Bands), and their accomplishments only warrant a tiny sentence? East Valley also was top notch and stayed, with Mead, to watch CV’s standstill victory performance.

Overall, it is very sad to me that marching band and color guard kids don’t get more respect outside the band community. In general, they practice more days, nights and weekends than any sports team, perform rain or shine, are focused from sunrise to midnight on competition days, travel thousands of miles to compete in a span of four weeks, go out on the band field and perform extremely complicated music and visual shows to few accolades.

There’s something wrong about that, when music and dance combined with leadership and discipline is something that will take our kids further in life than many other activities.