STATE CHAMPS! COWETA BAND DOMINATES

For the third year in a row the Coweta Band has won the 4A/5A title of Grand Champion of the Oklahoma Bandmasters Association statewide contest held at the Mustang High School. This year the Tiger band swept the entire competition by winning both the preliminary round in the 5A class and the Grand Championship round against the best of both 4A and 5A contenders. “Well, the success of Coweta’s band program has, you know, always been a whole community success,” Head Director Chris Koehn said. “We have great kids.” For five straight weeks, every Saturday, the Coweta Band has gone to competitions to prepare for state. Undoubtedly, that took enormous family support, dedication and help, and Director Koehn was the first to point that out. “This is the most parent support we’ve ever had when going to contests,” he said.” “It takes a lot of parents to feed the kids, to work at our camps, to put the props together, to build the props, and you know all that stuff.” “We had absolutely huge family support with our fundraiser, the pie auction that we do at the Fall Festival, where we brought in about $19,000,” he added. “So that helped us pay for some of the last things we needed for this show, for sure.” Much more goes into these events than the director and the student musicians. It takes a large number of individuals to put together a state winning show for three years in a row. “And the other directors and staff are really super talented and great educators and really inspire our kids to perform at the level that they do, so it’s really just a whole town thing at Coweta,” he added. The OBA breaks the competition down into three classes — one for 1A, 2A and 3A schools combined, then 4As and 5As and followed by the third field of 6A schools. The twelve best from each of those preliminary rounds will advance to the grand championship in each of the three categories. Preliminary rounds are held in the morning, where the Coweta band competed against the teams in their class only (4A schools against 4A, 5A against 5A). Following those performances, judges score the bands and name both the 4A and 5A champions. It is after this that the big battle begins, which includes performances from the top teams from both classes that qualified at prelims. Imagine the intensity as the teams gear up to perform the best performance of their season; the one they’ve worked for all year — get on the field, get set up, perform a state winning performance, and get marched off the field in the fifteen minutes allotted for each show. But, the Grand Championship Round is for all the marbles. Hundreds of hours of work and study and dedication have gone into that fifteen minutes. This is the shot, the Coweta Band conductor starts the march. Game on. After the performances, the judges were impressed and reached the decision. It would be the Coweta Tigers that earned the highest score and clinched the Grand Championship Title for the third year in a row. “A lot of the success of this year can be attributed to them and the fact that they work so hard for each other,” Koehn said. “It was a cool day for me, for sure, though. It was a lot of fun.” Not only that, Director Koehn led his band to sweep the entire competition. They were named 5A Champions and the Grand Champions, leading to a full sweep of the state competition. “Well, this group of seniors is a really amazing group of kids, and them, as well as the other leadership kids that we have that aren’t seniors, have done a great job this year of helping out the younger kids to learn their music and their marching,” Koehn said. “We have older kids even helping the younger ones make sure they’re making good grades in their classes so that everybody has good grades in English, math, or whatever else they’re taking.” “As far as the younger kids go, we have a really strong group of junior high. As a matter of fact, several of those kids came to help set up props and help the band when they could, which is good experience. I look forward to next year.”

STATE CHAMPS! COWETA BAND DOMINATES

Photo Credit: Coweta American

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