Gaffney hosted a Tournament of Champions. How do you think Fort Mill’s band finished?

Hundreds of students are putting in just as many hours to make this marching season the best yet for both the Nation Ford and Fort Mill High School marching bands.

Nearly every weekend in October and into November will be dedicated to either all-day practices or competitions both locally and across the Carolinas. Fort Mill’s band plans to take its competition piece all the way to Grand Nationals in Indianapolis, Ind. It’s the final trip to wrap up what will be an exciting competition season, said Band Director John Pruitt.

“The students love the theme and the music we’re doing,” he said, “They’re musicians so they get excited about playing good music,” he said.

The theme that has everyone buzzing is “The Golden Age of the Silver Screen.” The performance includes pieces from iconic movies including “Ben Hur” and “Sunset Boulvard.”

“The music is grandiose and dramatic and fits well outdoors so the students love the music and the fact that we are doing a show about the making of movies means we have a lot of props,” Pruitt said.

The band’s performance includes the look of a Hollywood movie lot and even a racing chariot.

“It’s a lot of moving pieces and is a lot like doing a movie production itself,” Pruitt said.

Fort Mill High School’s band had its first competition Saturday in Gaffney at the Reservation Tournament of Champions and finished No. 2 overall in class 5A, the largest one. For Mill won awards for Best Color Guard and Best Music. Defending S.C. 5A Champion Byrnes High School finished No. 1 in the class.

From there nearly every weekend is filled with travel and competition including a trip to Atlanta where the band will be among the first to play in the new Mercedes Benz Stadium.

“Getting to perform in some of the best football arenas in the world is exciting enough but playing for an enthusiastic audience that loves bands, that’s what makes these Saturdays so enjoyable,” Pruitt said.

It’s not just about music for the 204 students in this year’s marching band. They quickly become like each other’s second family and lean on each other for support, Pruitt said.

“It’s a huge social activity, as well as artistic, and physical, and performing and has all these other aspects with it,” he said, “They just enjoy being with each other.”

230 marching strong at NaFo

Nation Ford High School Band Director Martin Dickey echoes that sentiment, and said he sees similar bonds form among his nearly 230 marching band members. For them, the competition season is about achieving excellence.

“The kids want to be good at what they do, and it’s not about beating another group, it’s ‘how good could we be?’” Dickey said.

His band’s competition schedule is also rigorous and includes the South Carolina state marching competition over two weekends in October and a Bands of America competition in Jacksonville, Ala., on Oct. 7. Dickey said it takes a great deal of dedication for his students to perform at their best.

“We demand excellence and discipline and a lot of kids gravitate toward that,” he said.

The Nation Ford High School marching band performance piece this year is title “All That Glitters,” and includes modern takes on classic compositions from Italian composer Ottorino Respighi and French composer Claude Debussy.

“We will take that music, have our arranger update it, make it different enough but keep the integrity of the music,” he said. “Many of our kids will go out and buy the originals, and we are exposing them to historically great pieces of music that they didn’t know existed.”

Dickey considers himself, first and foremost, not just a band director but a music educator. He wants to immerse his students in classical pieces of music so that they have a great foundation in music.

“The reason those pieces of music have held up for hundreds of years is because they’re just really good pieces of music,” he said. “And if you updated them then people will say ‘I never realized Bach sounded so good.”

Another benefit of using classic pieces of music is that it is considered public domain. That means the band doesn’t have to pay a royalty fee, which is a huge bonus in a year when there is a very exciting, and expensive, final trip planned to wrap the season.

“We’ve got this little parade we’re doing,” Dickey joked.

A performance in The Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade will be the culmination of months of hard work for the band. Nation Ford High School is the only marching band in the Carolinas that will march its way down 5th Avenue in New York City on Thanksgiving Day. Dickey said his band members are now in fundraising mode. It’s a lot of work he admits he couldn’t do on his own.

“I learned a long time ago that what I will do is I will surround myself with good teachers, good instructors and let them do their job and stay out of their way,” he said. “And I do the same thing with the parents, I have parents who really want to work hard.”

This story was originally published October 4, 2017 at 10:59 AM with the headline "Gaffney hosted a Tournament of Champions. How do you think Fort Mill’s band finished?."