On Saturday, October 13, Ayala High School hosted its annual Music In Motion (MIM) tournament, kicking off the marching band season with a great start. The competition featured 22 different schools, all of which are a part of the Western Band Association (WBA) and are split into different classes. 

The competition started off with Class 1A, which was made up of Mission Viejo High School, San Marino High School, Workman High School, Paramount High School, Orange High School, Bloomington High School, Azusa High School, and Gladstone High School. During this, the schools demonstrated their best colorguard, orchestra, and drumline talents to get the best scores they could.  The highest score from this class was from San Marino High School, with a score of 64.650. 

After this, there was a short break before starting Class 2A which included South Pasadena High School, Grand Terrace High School, Los Alamitos High School, Carlsbad High School, and Temecula High School. The school that came in first place from this class was South Pasadena High School with a spectacular overall score of 69.200.  

After going through classes 3A and 4A, class 5A started their performances. Ayala High School’s Band and Colorguard (BAC) ended the performance by introducing their new program “Falling Up,” which is inspired by the 1996 title poem collection and poem which was written by Shel Silverstein.  This was the BAC’s first time displaying their show, making it necessary for them to polish over and improve their skills in their next performances. 

“We really learned where our flaws were and where we lacked after this performance, especially [after] watching the video of it,” Bree Wu (11) said. “We have more [competitions] since this is just our first one, so I feel like we can improve [with] timing and just staying connected as a whole.”

For all of the different elements, Ayala BAC stayed in the middle of the pack, with a third in effect at 22.575, a third in music with a 22.663, a fifth in visual with a 15.55, a second in colorguard with an 8.20, and a third place in percussion with a 8.10. Overall, this landed Ayala in third place with a final score of 78.087 in their class. 

For some of the BAC members, it was their first performance of their high school careers. This without a doubt caused some nerves, but it all ended up working out in the end beautifully. 

“Something that I learned from this performance was that being scared isn’t a bad thing, as long as you stay confident,” Shiloh Amaziah (9) said. “This could definitely help me perform better at competitions.” 

While this was an important show for the BAC, the band directors put emphasis on the fact that it does not matter what score they got; it just matters that they are trying hard and having fun while they’re doing it. If they do this, it will be guaranteed that they will have an excellent performance.

“We always tell them not to get caught up in scores or placements,” Band Director Mr. Timothy Trost said. “Our job is to make sure we entertain our crowd and have the best performance that we can. As long as they go out there and we just have the best show ever, that’s what we ask of our students.”