The Ogden High School Tigers are on a tear. It’s still early, but the football team on the field is undefeated. But up in the bleachers, there’s a current three-peat streak.
That’s where you’ll find the marching band: nearly 100 musicians with three consecutive state titles.
At a Friday night home game, they held their instruments and chatted while they waited for the signal to energize the crowd with a pep tune. When they’re not competing, this is their bread and butter.
Being in the band is awesome, said sophomore clarinetist Z Brinson.
“I love being in the band.”
Brinson is not alone. Parents wore orange hoodies that declared “I’m with the band.” The band’s competitive success has come from working together. It’s a team effort, said sophomore trumpet player Lucy Walker.
“We know that it's not a single effort. It's an effort as a group, and we bring it together, and we just like, we act as a team. We don't act as a single person. We don't think of just ourselves.”
Many of the musicians said something similar. In a world where high school activities can be cutthroat and competitive, they said theirs is the opposite. They’ve built trust and community together, said Cesar Ochoa, a junior on the bass drum.
Beyond growing as a musician, being in the band has made him more open and outgoing.
“We spend hours on end together every day, all day,” he said. “Just doing that and building this connection between each other definitely makes us win.”
When the whistles blew and the refs cleared the field, it was time for the marching band’s main event: the halftime show. This year’s production is called Abracadabra.
When it was time to take the field, director Stan Renda, in jeans and a cowboy hat, gave a guttural call: “Be ready! Don’t sprint, but safely run. They’re new uniforms, we don’t need you messing them up right now.”
The new uniforms have a black base layer with an orange, yellow and white mock turtleneck. There’s a matching half skirt – or cape, as one student called it – around the waist, and almost-cylindrical hats.
The white parts glowed under the lights. The drum line stood in front – drums, marimbas, even a gong. Behind them, the rest took small, careful steps through the choreography, their formation changing shape as they marched. The tubas and baritones stood out like elephant ears in the back. The color guard tossed and spun black flags as they pushed a covered wagon across the field.
This band started practicing together in June. Macks Carver, a junior bass guitarist, said they do well in competitions because of the sheer amount of work they put in.
“We practice a lot. Like, more than 20 hours a week, a lot.”
That includes Fridays when the band is together from about 2:00 p.m. until the end of the game.
As the last bits of orange faded from the sky, the band filed back into the bleachers. They peeled off their orange layers to reveal black t-shirts and pants underneath. With halftime wrapped up, it was time for a break.
“We can't eat food in uniform, so we have to change out into our regular clothes,” senior snare drummer Izi Anderson explained.
Ogden’s football team held a sizable lead all night, and the band could relate to the feeling of victory — not in a game, but a marching band competition.
“It's really cool seeing all the other teams and then you're like, ‘Oh, they're doing good,’ and then kind of get worried,” Anderson said. “But hearing the scores, like being on the field with everybody, and just hearing our name being called out is really, really cool.”
As the game neared its end, the sky was dark and the stands smelled like hot dogs. With another football victory, the band’s spirits were high. Anderson said she’s sacrificed a lot of time and turned down a lot of social events to be in the band.
Despite that, she keeps coming back.
“Nights like these make it all worth it, for sure,” she said.
Macy Lipkin is a Report for America corps member who reports for KUER in northern Utah.
