A morning breeze sweeps across the football field as a horde of marching band kids get their instruments ready- anxious, groggy and ready to learn.

   “Morning practice always has its ups and downs,” senior Sam Browning said. “You [have to] wake up at like 6 in the morning to get to school and then we’re on the field and marching by 7, but it’s actually a lot of fun once you get rolling.”

   The Blue Jay Pride marching band takes a lot of time to rehearse. In addition to performing their halftime show, the band will also be marching in the Fall Festival parade. The parade will run through downtown Liberty and will start at 11 a.m. on Saturday, September 26.

   While the underclassmen may be unsure of what is to come, band veterans know the parade is anything, but easy.

   “It can be fun, but I’ve only ever done it once because it got rained out our first year,” junior Josh Hanz said. “It is usually hot and uncomfortable, but people get to watch us so that’s the good part about it.”          

   “When you’re at a performance it’s always really exciting to get moving and be putting on a show for the entire audience.” Browning said. “You know right as soon as it’s done if you gave a great show. But if it didn’t go over quite as well you get that feeling of disappointment that you didn’t do quite the best that you could have.”

   Not only does the band memorize their music, they also have to learn the drill. The drill is where they stand and move during the halftime show. There are roughly 160 students in the band. Each is given a packet full of charts that show where they are supposed to stand on the field. In this year’s show alone, there are over 40 different formations that need to be learned and memorized by the homecoming game on September 25.

   “We are done with our third and fourth part [of the formations],” senior Adam Hayakawa said. “The third song is the drum solo which I’m pretty excited about.”

   The theme of the show is “Changes.”

   “We took songs about change and things that deal with changes and sort of put that all together in a package,” band director Eddie Owen said. “We mashed up all the four seasons with David Bowie’s ‘Changes’, John Lennon’s ‘Imagine’ and ‘Changes’ by a rock group called ‘Yes.’”

   Since marching band camp in July, the band has been working on the show and memorizing their music.

   “We started backwards, so we started with the last tune and we’ll end with the first,” Hanz said. “We’ve learned how to march the last tune and we’re pretty much done with the third one, too.”

   The band will enter two contests this fall.

   “We have two competitions that we’ll  be attending this year; one of them is on   October 10 in Fayette, Missouri at the Central Methodist Band Day and the other is on October 17 in Trenton, Missouri called The Missouri Day Marching Festival,” Owen said.

   Until the Fall Fest parade, students can see the band perform at every Friday home game and get a preview in the hallway beforehand. Just before school ends, the band marches through the building and plays the Blue Jay Fight Song.

   “It’s chaotic trying to fit the whole band through the little hallways,” Witt said.

   As the sounds of the drums echo throughout the building, not only does it get students ready for the game, it also gets them psyched for the band.

   Right now, the drumline is selling fan shirts to support the band. The drumline is made up of percussionists who wear and play their drums during performances.

   “We are selling shirts for new equipment like drum skins which make the drums look new and LEDs which are going to be for our pep rallies,” Hayakawa said.

   There will be a lot of improvement and success over the course of the season.

   “Seeing what [the band] can do from the beginning of our show to the end of our show is really tremendous,” Owen said.