Alumni,

Congratulations to 80+ alumni members who participated last night in the performance at the band festival.  We had a good turn-out and the massed forces of players, flags and majorettes performed a wonderful and well-received  show.  I’ve heard many wonderful comments from folks who were at the show with many of them centering around –”How are you able to do all that in one day?”.   Our performances are the ultimate in fast-learn, and put it together quickly numbers.   It is a testament to your cooperation, abilities and experiences to be able to accomplish so much in so little time.  Thank you again.

Thank you also for your patience with me.  I am getting better at designing and teaching drill to fit our circumstances of time and energy.  I was very happy that the teaching and learning of the drills went as quickly as it did.  Having the sheets with the basic instructions on them helped a lot, but the help of Bobbi Emery, Mary Ana Hicks and many others who are able to interpret my written and verbal instructions on the field and Mr. Coller watching and advising me from the sideline, was invaluable.

We had the height of cooperation from Mr. Oshaben (current VHSMB director) and that certainly helped us get our rehearsal going in the morning.  And–wasn’t the VHSMB great this year?  Very nice work by our current directors and advisors.  We look forward to more.

Glad to have the support of alumni who couldn’t march with us, but were willing to run on the field and play the middle numbers.  We were happy to have Ryan Harris, Eric Henry and Pat Thayer do that for us.

As a side note—Linda Cyrek had a pedometer with her during our day of practice and personally logged over 14,000 steps and over seven miles!!

We did not come to any solid conclusions from our pants discussions.  I will look at the video and see what I think about it, take into consideration your thoughts and make a decision.  It will be sent out to you with the email after the date for next year’s festival is announced, and we’ll go from there.  I won’t make everybody happy, but we will have a direction–at least.

In typical fashion, I forgot to get the election of officers done–again.   I guess I just get so caught up in getting a show on the field.  I will check with our current officers and get back to you on that.

It was great seeing alumni who I haven’t seen for quite a while.  It was a wonderful surprise to see Shannen Jackson (Showalter), who was a majorette in the 80′s (hope that’s the correct milieu), sitting in the booth when I went up there.  I haven’t seen her for at least 15 years.   She’s on our emailing list now, so she will hear about us and–who knows–maybe will be able to join us some time in the future.

That is certainly the most wonderful part of this enterprise, seeing friends from our past and, in my case, being able to work with them again  and to find out what’s up in their lives.

Don’t forget to check out our website.  It’s new and very informative and our performance will be posted soon.

Have a lot of fun.

JNP