Crimson Cadets (St. Louis BOA Marching Contest) -- Oct. 11, 2003 -- www.cvilleok.com

The Crimson Cadets traveled to St. Louis for a Bands of America regional marching competition over the weekend. The Cadets faced their stiffest competition to date going against schools from Tennesee, Missouri, Michigan, Kentucky, Kansas, Illinois, Iowa, Virginia, Mississippi, Ohio, Minnesota, Georgia and Oklahoma. The Cadets placed third in their class at the competition. The weekend was fast paced with little time for them to rest during the trip. The Cadets began the weekend Friday morning with a 7 a.m. rehearsal at the football field before loading the buses for the 400 mile trip to St. Louis. They arrived at the hotel around 8:00 and were to be in their room with lights out at 9:30. Saturday began before 6 a.m. for the band having to meet in the lobby at that time. They left the hotel and began their walk to the Edward Jones Dome to begin their physical and music warm-up with a 7:45 a.m. performance. After their performance, the band went back to the hotel and changed and walked back over to the dome to cheer on Broken Arrow's band. After BA's performance, they loaded the buses to go eat lunch, and then back to the dome to watch other band's in prelimanary performance. At 5 p.m. the results from the prelimanary competition and the bands that made finals were announced. There were a total of 34 bands at the competition with only the top 10 bands going to finals. One thing that makes this competition so tough is the bands that the Cadets competed against are bigger and march older students. The Cadets went back to the dome to watch finals and see the shows of the finalist bands. They had a writing assignment to pick out things they saw in other bands shows that was due before they returned to Collinsville. The Cadets are home now with no more competitions before they go to Broken Arrow, on November 1st, for their Oklahoma Bandmasters Association competition where they hope to make it 10 years in a row as the class champions, which will just add to the history of the only band in Oklahoma to win state that many years in a row.

-- Doug Wakefield