The De Soto High School marching band recently competed in two marching festivals: the Baker Marching Festival and the Kansas State Central States Marching Festival. The band received a 1 rating at both events, and were named grand champions at the Baker competition.

The band has been preparing their “Tower of Power” show for competition since August.

“We didn’t finish learning the show until a week before we performed it, so leading up to the day before we were still learning and fixing things, we had to keep working every single day,” said senior section leader Jackie Kennard. “We had to work really hard and had Monday night rehearsals, and that focus from the band helped us win.”

DHS band director Matt Bradford is impressed with the band’s accomplishments at Baker and K-State.

“I thought their show was better at K-State than at Baker, which is the whole point, to keep getting better. I was really proud of them,” Bradford said. That was a good show, it was fun, I heard a lot of really positive comments from just about everybody.”

Senior drum major Liza Elwell emphasized the importance of positivity in the band’s success.

“Part of the reason why the De Soto band is such a successful organization is because we always try to keep everything positive and upbeat, and that helps encourage people to give their best effort. I think that sort of positivity and support in the leadership really contributed to our win,” Elwell said.

Kennard is proud of her section’s performance in the festivals.

“I feel like my section did well. It was mostly freshmen and four upperclassmen, and the girls did a really good job of taking criticism and learning from it, and they all did really well. As a senior I’m really proud that we’ve accomplished something so big two years in a row,” Kennard said.

The band will perform its annual glow show at the last scheduled home football game of the season on Oct. 21 and participate in their final festival of the year on Oct. 22.