TWHS’s marching band and color guard performed at the UIL state competition this weekend, as well as the Band of America (BOA) superregional. The tournaments took place in San Antonio, starting Saturday, November 9, and continuing through Tuesday, November 11. While they have yet to perform in the final round at UIL, they took fourth place in the BOA tournament. This year, they performed “Fantasia on Frenchmen Street,” which contains music from composers Wynton Marsalis, Jaco Pastorius, David Gillingham, and George Gershwin.

BOA is a lesser-known organization that’s specific to band, though it is still a national competition. This weekend, they competed in superregionals, the second highest level leading up to grand nationals. The superregional tournament is mostly between other Texas schools. For the past two years, they have won second place at BOA superregionals, and this year, they took fourth place.

The TWHS band has been competing in UIL since the high school was founded and made the state finals, for the first time, in 2002. Since then, they’ve made finals eight additional times, and this year, they won first place in the area-level Saturday, November 2, making it their third consecutive win.

Overall, the long weekend was a busy one. With the entire BOA competition, preliminaries, and finals stuffed into Saturday, leaving just Sunday to practice for UIL prelims on Monday and finals on Tuesday night. TWHS band and color guard have amazing track records for these competitions. Congratulations to the band and guard on BOA and good luck at UIL!