For the past two months, the Hillcrest Blue Wave Marching band has been learning, memorizing, and perfecting their show for regional competitions. Their show this year is entitled “Where’s Chuck?”and features well-known, Latin-infused pieces by the musician, Chuck Mangione.

The band was unsuccessful at making it past preliminaries in their first half of competitions, Valhalla and Ozarko, which took place at Parkview and MSU respectively. However, the band remained optimistic and continued to polish their show. The practice paid off.

On Saturday, October 16th, they took 2nd place overall in the Ozark Mountain Marching Festival in Reeds Spring. The accomplishment lifted the spirits of the band members.

In the show, junior Devon Arnall, who assumes the role of the featured musician by wearing Mangione’s signature hat and playing his opening solo with a flugelhorn, gave his thoughts on the finals performance. “This was definitely our best performance of the season so far. Finals gave us a second chance to show the judges our full potential, and I think we did just that,” he said.

With one last competition left, the band is still hard at work in preparation for its final performance. On October 30th, Blue Wave will be heading to Warrensburg, Missouri for the University of Central Missouri’s Festival of Champions, where it will be competing against the Branson and Monett bands, among others.

Reported by Chandler Reed