At the UIL Region Marching contest this weekend, the band continued their 32nd straight year of superior rating.

“UIL is more of a benchmark,” senior drum major Holly Ekas. “Texas Marching Class is more of a competition and seeing how we match up against our peers and the greats.”

On October 11, Band won the entire Texas Marching Classic. They made history as it was the first time the band has won a finals competition and made a score of 86.95, despite the two-hour weather delay.

They won their class, outstanding music, visual, general effect, color guard, and percussion, and were named the overall grand champions of the entire contest.

“Our mentality was: yes, we had a great run during prelims,” senior flute section leader Haylee Coward said, “but now we need to make this run even better so that we can get a higher score and we can do amazing things with everything that’s going on.”

The entire competition does not just mean finals, it means they also got first in preliminaries.

“During warm-up, the band sounded really, really good,” senior drum major Jessica Jones said, “so we felt pretty confident about  how we were going to sounds and be on the field, everybody was nailing the visuals. We definitely knew it was going to be one of our best runs.”

After placing second at Bands of America – Austin, this was a big step forward in the right direction for the band.

“Last year we were always the…one-out of finals, one-out of state,” Jones said,” and now that we took this step and got first in this competition and second at BOA – Austin, this is a big confidence builder for us, and now we know our true potential and what we can accomplish.”

Since they did so well, rehearsals have gotten much tougher, but this only increases the members’ dedication and performance in order to prepare them for their next competition.

“We’re adding a lot more visuals, so there’s a lot of preparation and concentration that has happened,” Jones said. “In rehearsals, we have to keep up with protocol so that they go by very efficiently and so that Mr. Selaiden can get everything he wanted to get done in his lesson plan.”

It wasn’t just the Leander Band the swept the competition, it was LISD. Cedar Park took second place, and Vandegrift took third.