The drumline will compete on Saturday Nov. 7 at the virtual Lone Star Classic Drumline Competition.

The drumline is in the Standstill 1 Silver division and will perform against Coppell, Plano and Cedar Park High School. In addition to competing full ensembles, soloists will have an opportunity to compete in their respective instrument divisions. 

“[The difficulty of the music] is about the same as last year,” snare captain senior Tyler Kerch said. “Every single year we take another step forward, and I think this year was no different – it’s easy to hold back given [the pandemic].”

Multiple takes of the show were recorded on Oct. 31, following the band’s parent preview performance. Contest submissions were due on Nov. 5 and judging will begin on Nov. 7 at 5 p.m. 

“We had a guy come; he set up microphones and we had a camera up at the top of the stands,” front ensemble co-captain Serena Karim said. “We had a few GoPros on the sides and we just did takes until we found one that we liked, visually and [audibly.]”

The inspiration for this year’s show, entitled Ragnarok, comes from the video game God of War. 

“The first and third movements [of our show] are from the game,” head percussion director Zach Houston said. “The second movement is from a piece by Nathan Daughtrey, a percussion ensemble piece based off of Norse mythology. We used the second movement [of Daughtrey’s piece,] Niffleheim.” 

In addition to maintaining the challenging level of performance music, the drumline has faced new issues as a result of current restrictions.

“[The pandemic] has altered [our preparation] quite a bit,” Houston said. “We lost the first three weeks of rehearsals for [the show] because we were virtual only. We were still doing some of those rehearsals, but the amount of hours we had was definitely far less. We lost a lot of time in the summer too, and that’s where we normally prepare most of that music.”

Despite the altered start, rehearsals schedules have returned closer to that of previous years.

“[With school,] we’ve been continuing our normal schedule with morning rehearsals that we’ve been doing – that stayed constant despite COVID,” Karim said. “We still have rehearsals at 7 a.m. for the drum show and have band rehearsals after school.”

While the drumline had planned to compete again fully in-person at the HEB Drumline Contest on Nov. 14, it has been canceled due to concerns over student safety. Although the Lone Star Classic will be the last competition for the percussion’s 2020 season, the full band’s season is not expected to end until mid December. 

“I’m just happy that we were able to come up with a finished product that we are super proud of despite how everything has been this year,” Kerch said. “You could take off the label of COVID and I’d still be super proud of it all.”