High School Football

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
21

At my school the Band is the important part. We have about 120 members all together and are doing great. We haven’t lost a single competition in the last four years and are undefeated so far this year. While 300+ players looks impressive they are usually sloppy and do bad because there are so many more people to mess up. We’ve gone up against almost 350 and won.

So this isn’t a total hijack…
Our football team sucks. The coach is also the athletic director so he won’t fire himself. All they do is play the same couple of guys and everybody else just stands on the sidelines. By the end you get about 20 totally spent guys and the rest of the team are hardly even dirty.

22

My high school doesn’t even have a football team.

23

Monster, you said you ONLY had 30 guys in your band? My friend, I feel I must welcome to my world, the world of the downtrodden pep band.

Our school’s pep band is quite an interesting entity. Composed of a number of people that fluctuates between 5 and 20 people, we sit in the stands in beat up SSA jerseys and play songs to get the crowd rowdy. It never works, though, so we make up for it by being rowdy ourselves.

I hate to say it, and it’s nothing personal, Monster, but you and your compatriots are a sworn enemy of myself and my clan. Game by game, marching bands from other schools come to ours, show us up, and basically cause trouble.

Pep Band vs. Marching Band highlights of this year include a musical battle, where they played a song right after we did, which resulted in back and forth playing of it, louder and louder, just to decide who had the right to. They played it louder with their 300 people, but we won, since right after we played it, our football team kicked a game-winning, overtime field goal. Heh.

Another battle was with Apollo Ridge. It was a bitter fight when they came to our school. We made fun of the kid who ran up and down the sidelines with an “AR” flag every touchdown, and they almost set our field on fire with an overzealous fire-juggling half-time show. Long story.

SO, Monster, complain all you want about only having 30 members. You haven’t LIVED until you’ve played an electric keyboard in a torrential downpour (I decided to stop when it started buzzing), then, after being forced to pack up instruments, standing with 2 other “hard core players” and SINGING the ditties. THAT, my friend, is pep.

24

Jester, I know there are many schools out there with much smaller bands, or even schools that don’t have established bands. The thing is, my band has to work together perfectly in order to be heard (We get a lot of credit from other schools for being as loud as 50-60 piece bands with good tone quality as well). However, we were missing several people that night…I think it was 7 or 8 people. For a band our size, that causes significant problems.

Last year was a good year for our band, but bad for the football team.

This year is good for the football team, but not quite as good for the band. Go figure.

25

First, I’d like to argue that Friday night football is wrong, communist, and an abomination to the IPU. HS football was meant to be played on Saturday, daggummit.

That said, the only game that matters is the one played on Thanksgiving Day. And the Thanksgiving day game that mattered the most, and was, in fact, the greatest football game ever played (the articles written about it can’t even describe it half way, was The 100th Game between Beverly High and Salem High on Thanksgiving Day, 1998.

You may continue your discussion now.

26

Hey, Monster, all in good fun. I gots respect for larger bands, and can definitely understand how more people make synchronized playing harder (having attended many band concerts at my school, <shudder>). It’s just the pissy ones, that yell at our band cause we gave them the “wrong snack” for halftime. Also, I guess I was just bitter over those decorative tubas. :wink:

27

What really makes me mad are the stupid “We’re better than you” type bands that play the same songs, and play 'em loud, but it hurts to hear the horrible quality of it. (shudder)

28

Wow, it seems this thread should be changed for High School Football to High School Band.

Just out of curiosity are any of you guys/girls in PA? It would be neat to have a mini-Dopefest at a football game. I go to Boyertown Area Senior Highschool if you want to check your schedules.

29

How did a good ole Football thread get turned into a band discussion? I won’t have it!!!

Big HS Football player/fan here. Still miss playing more than anything, sadly football is the one sport where you really can’t ever play again after HS. I had to choose between a shitty college where I could still play, or a great DI school where I could just get drunk watching in the stands. Sure there are flag football leagues, but its all about the hitting. Its not even the same game.
I’m still bitter that my parents wouldn’t let me play until HS.

I was at my HS’ homecoming game last weekend, we played our #1 rival and holder of the state record for most championships. We beat them with a field goal with 18 seconds left, it was a great game. Our team is 6-0 and ranked 15th in the state. Our running back is averageing 258 yards per game. Its great fun. Damn I miss those days.

30

I had the choice between football and marching band. Freshman year I had a good shot at being a varsity lineman, but I chose tobe in band instead. I’d rather have fun playing music than getting hurt (I also have a bad right knee, which would’ve completely hindered my playing ability).

Hey Omni, being a football jock explains your mental capacity limitations :wink:

31

Care to put that theory to the test?

32

No…there’s a reason why I’m in band. :wink:

33

Originally posted by C.A.A.O.M.:

I have the book sitting on my nightstand as I type. It was written by H.G. Bissinger and the cover says that it was a “New York Times Runaway Bestseller”. I found it at a strip mall bargain bookstore for a few bucks.

The book doesn’t paint Odessa as being a very nice place. The whites are openly racist, the fans obsessed, and the town is going nowhere. Football is pretty much the only thing most people in the town have to distract them from their lives.

34

My school football team sucks. We’ve only made it to the playoffs once, last year. This year we’ve only won one game, 28-0. I was proud of the Warriors. Too bad almost no one came to the game since they gave up on us.

Another band geek speaking here! Our band used to be good until our band director decided to play the same songs EVERY year. He’s not willing to change. We’ve played the same songs for more than 20 years. This year the band sucks along with the football team. There’s no excitement anymore.

35

300+ members? That’s probably larger than UCLA’s band. And a lot of other big colleges as well.

How long are halftimes in high school, anyway? Seems Granada Hills’ band would be spending most of it filing in and out of the stands!

I stand corrected. Never let it be said that I’m not willing to admit that I’m wrong.

Kudos to you, Iampunha. Far as I’m concerned, an in-depth knowledge of Married with Children is every bit as impressive as an in-depth knowledge of Shakespeare. Maybe more.