High school marching bands from across the region will gather at Thompson Field in Wacker Park Saturday for the 17th annual Pauls Valley Marching Band Championships. This year’s Championships will look a little different for both spectators and participants as the event moves from a parade and field competition to a prelims and finals format.
In past years, participating bands marched in a parade competition through downtown Pauls Valley before moving to field competition at Wacker Park.
This year the entire competition will be on Thompson Field, where bands will compete in a preliminary stage and the top 12 marching bands will advance to compete in the finals round. Pauls Valley Band Director Travis Hathcote said the changes are intended to reinvigorate the contest.
“Participation has dwindled in recent years, with other competitions falling on the same date, and in part because of the parade competition, I think,” Hathcote said. “Not as many school bands march in parades now, which is unfortunate.”
He also points out there is no Oklahoma Secondary School Activities Association (OSSAA) band competition for parade marching currently.
With the lower participation numbers, it was decided Pauls Valley either needed to change the format of the competition or let it die out.
“We don’t want that to happen,” Hathcote said.
The prelims and finals format is geared to provide high school marching bands with more opportunities to prepare for the OSSAA Regional Marching Contest, the first step in attaining a State Championship title.
With the format change, Pauls Valley is expecting 25 groups this year, representing schools in classes 2A to 5A. That’s a significant increase from the number of groups that participated last year, according to Hathcote.
The new artificial turf installed at Thompson Field over the summer is also a draw, Hathcote said. With most OSSAA competition venues now equipped with turf, Hathcote said it’s a plus for schools to be able to gain more experiene performing on turf. The stadium’s new video scoreboard will also be utilized throughout the day.
The first band to perform in Saturday’s prelims will take the field at 9:45 a.m. and the finals competition will begin at 7 p.m.
Admission is $5 for adults and children under 10 are free.
