On a recent shopping trip to Staples, I encountered a student & parent from an area school (proudly wearing their band t-shirts) and struck up a conversation with them. Upon finding out that I was the director at Reeths-Puffer, the parent said "Oh, the enemy." After a brief conversation we agreed that it might be better to consider the groups "friendly rivals" instead of enemies. I decided then, that I needed to do some work on spreading the word about our philosophy on competition.

The competitive band arena is a great place to set high standards and push yourself to attain those goals... and see many entertaining groups along the way. Our goal for the RPHS Marching Band is to be the very best that we can be. We do many things to accomplish this: we hire the best people we can to design a great show, we work long and hard at producing this show, we bring in additional staff to help in specialty areas of the production, and when we go to a competition, we have outside experts (the panel of 7 judges) give us input on what we do. I honestly believe there isn't much more that we can do to be our very best.

Most bands in the competitive arena do similar things to what we are doing. Most students put in similar hours of work and are hoping to do their very best, just like our students. What I try to pass on to our students (and their parents) is that the competitive arena is only one of the stops on our road to excellence. The true competition is within ourselves: to be the best that we can be.

I've said to our students on several occasions that we should be supporting the performances of other groups. If a group happens to score higher than we do, we should congratulate them! We know what it took to obtain our score - they deserve our respect. Friendly rivalries are great. We push one another to new heights. It is also important to acknowledge the accomplishments of others because we all know what it takes to get there.

Charles Hodson
RP Director of Bands