See results for Clover, Rock Hill, Fort Mill in SC big marching bands contests
Both Rock Hill region marching bands competing in the 5A state championships Saturday advanced to the finals, with one of them finishing third overall.
Clover High School finished with a score of 90 in the finals at Colleton County High School. Only Wando (93.8) and James F. Byrnes (92.05) scored higher. On a score sheet with more than 20 graded columns, Clover finished as high as second and never worse that fourth among the dozen 5A schools that qualified for the final round.
Rock Hill High School also qualified for finals, finishing at No. 12. Rock Hill scored as high as eighth on the score sheet.
Like high school sports, marching bands in South Carolina are split into divisions based on school size. Those splits aren’t the same as the ones the South Carolina High School League uses to make classifications and region assignments for sports. But like sports, 5A bands represent the largest schools in the state.
The 5A classification is the only one where bands perform in both preliminary and finals competition on the same day. Earlier Saturday, 22 bands marched in the preliminary round. Clover and Rock Hill earned their same third and No. 12 spots, respectively, though both bands scored slightly higher in the finals round.
The win for Mount Pleasant’s Wando, the third largest public high school in the state, was the fourth straight for that Charleston County school. Wando and Byrnes have now won the past eight 5A state titles.
A 5A band that didn’t perform at the state competition was Fort Mill High School.
Fort Mill, winner of the most all-time state championships, alternates years marching in state and national competitions. Fort Mill performed at Disneyland in California last week before marching Saturday in the Bands of America Regional Championship at Utah Tech on Saturday.
Fort Mill marched in the 3A class — BOA uses four classes based on size that aren’t related to state classification — among 32 bands from six states. Fort Mill won its class over Maple Mountain and Brighton high schools from Utah. It was the 11th time Fort Mill won its class listing at a BOA event and the first time since 2019.
Catawba Ridge High School also marched in a BOA event Saturday, a week after the 4A upper state champion finished second in the South Carolina championship in its division.
At the competition in Troy, Alabama Catawba Ridge finished second its in 2A class and third overall among 14 bands from five states. Catawba Ridge was second overall in prelims. In the finals, the top three bands were separated by less than four-tenths of a point.
Catawba Ridge won a class championship and an overall grand championship at a BOA regional last year.
