Who knew my first year was going to be this groups most unstable and inconsistent turn of events. Some could say this was the nastiest experience for the Pioneer Drumline but I believe it was the most unsurpassed.

Every year the drumline competes in the WGI Sport of the Arts indoor competitions. It runs from around November to the middle of May and that entire time period is jam-packed with grueling work. The year started with twenty seven extraordinarily talented people and ended with twenty four.
  

It all began heading downhill when our center marimba player unfortunately got caught with drugs in his car. Keep in mind that he was a tremendous center piece to our show meaning without him, our show would be next to impossible to perform. His situation lead me to find out that eighty six percent of kids have been faced with somebody that smokes, drinks, or does drugs during the school day. That statistic alone has proven to single handedly destroy our show. He was later placed in ADC throughout the rest of our season. Our next predicament was due to an incident between two of our snare players who had gotten in a brawl over childish misconceptions during an early morning rehearsal. The individual that caused the fight got taken out of extracurricular activities and placed in ADC alongside our marimba player. Nearly eight percent of students have been in a fight on school grounds during a year-long survey. Being said, the possibilities are fairly slim of this outcome and this goes to show the amount of difficulties we’ve been faced with. Our last, but most alarming predicament, was when our cymbal player failed a class and decided to tell people about it the day of departure therefor, she was suspended from the trip. We then had to find a replacement to fill her spot on the floor. Because it was the day we left, we had a roughly sixteen hours to teach her and make her comfortable with the entire show. Keeping in mind that this process took the original player three months to fully understand.
  

Setting aside all the mishaps, the final day had arrived. Everybody was more nervous than ever but at the same time exited to see where we stand in the WGI Sport of the Arts world championships. I could hear the crowd roaring as the group before us finished and was exiting the floor. Suddenly I became really aware of my surroundings as if I was completely tuned out of the activity and the excitement and anxiety left my body. After entering the arena, the size of the crowd engulfed the floor. The show flew by feeling like it was ten seconds and we exited the stage leaving the audience blown away. I couldn’t be happier with the output of our show and I could tell the directors weren’t expecting a show like that from this group. Our final spot was nineteenth which doesn’t sound like a lot but you have to put in perspective it’s an entire countries worth of groups.
  

As expressed, this year demanded the most grueling work put forward into our show. We had realized that mishaps and struggles are there for a reason and in order to benefit from them is to look at them like they’re a standard that you have to keep exceeding. Every issue that comes your way can either drag you down or It can make you even stronger than before.