If students think getting up for school at 6 a.m. is exhausting, band members will beg to differ.

After a 7-hour drive that started at 2 a.m., OHS marching band competed in the Owasso Invitational Marching Festival in Owasso, Oklahoma on Sept. 27. The drive was worth their time.

“Talent is the accumulation of time and effort,” drum major John Hall (12) said, quoting assistant band director Mr. Theron Perkowski, who uses the line during rehearsal to motivate the band members. “We put our efforts in the place where it counted.”

First they competed in the preliminary rounds; their score was 64.15 and ranked 3rd out of five bands. This allowed them to move on to finals, where OHS received a score of 62.50 and got 11th place out of 12 schools.

One OHS student traveled to Oklahoma to watch the performance. Emily Miller (10) came to the competition to watch her friends perform. Miller is not in the band and does not have any relatives in it, but she wanted to support the band anyway. She rode with RJ Martin’s (10) family and said she had a blast.

“I really wanted to go because I have never heard the band play outside of the football games, and [I] wanted to know if it was different,” Miller said.

The OHS band will perform at the University of Missouri Champion of Champions competition in Columbia on Oct. 18. This competition is their last and is the equivalent of performing in districts; since it is at the end of the season, they hope to have their performance perfected. OHS placed second last year and hopes to win this year.