For most sports and clubs, state competitions are the crux of the season, with weeks upon weeks of work and stress for one day. A day to make it or break it. And for Monarch’s marching band, they are perfectly happy with how that one day went.

At state on October 24th and 25th in Colorado Springs, the band took sixth in 4a with their show “Stop and Go”. Their sixth place final standing was after finishing first in their quarter finals competition, which placed them in seventh going into semi finals. In semi finals they managed to bump up to sixth and maintained there.

“Our final show was the best that we’ve ever performed it; we were really excited,”said junior Paige Smith, who is a section leader for the saxophones.

The “Stop and Go” theme came from ideas related to those of traffic lights. This was illustrated not only by the movements of the band, the color guard’s costumes and flags, but also by a large, working stop light that changed colors in the middle of the field.

To pull off a good show, the band has to coordinate movement of different sections, have color guard dancing or twirling flags, and maintain a polished look of perfection; all while playing music. In order for Monarch’s band to perform well at state every single person had to be doing everything perfectly because one person making one small mistake can lose points.

“I dont think that a lot of people realize that it takes 300+ hours of really hard work, and blood sweat and tears,” said Smith, who also added that they practice rain or shine.

Now that state is done the band will continue into their concert season, only to resume work on their 2015 show next May.