Life drastically changed this school year for all students at NC. New challenges presented themselves thanks to a global pandemic, such as the absence of sports and other extracurricular activities. The Marching Band at NC contains over two hundred and thirty students and several of the participants find solace in the group, yet a number of changes forced themselves upon this extracurricular, butchering a hobby its members once loved. 

“We don’t even really have marching band anymore. Everything is completely different,” sophomore Addie Quintan said.

Band camp serves as a rite of passage for the marchers and this two week, the grueling camp also prepares everyone for the season. It teaches new members the basics of how to march and allows everyone to bond and form friendships, but due to social distancing rules and regulations, they can not fully prepare themselves this season. In addition, leadership positions in the band took a hit. Drum majors, the four student leaders that conduct and keep everyone in pace, ordinarily attend their own individual camp that teaches them how to do the required skills. With the cancellation of this projected camp, first-year drum majors that hoped to learn how to take on their new positions with ease may struggle. 

The band typically competes almost every weekend in October and practicing the show for these competitions consumes the entirety of the season. Members commit all of their time to performances, but with the cancellation of competitions, their days have become rendered empty. Instead, marchers now spend their time practicing old stand tunes as well as learning new ones.

With the football season starting a positive turn formed on this seemingly dreadful season. The band now forms a pep band when attending home football games and plays their stand tunes for the players and other students. It gives the students a sense of normality in a society that has completely changed. 

“One upside to this whole ordeal is that it was released that our competitions might be moved to springtime. So we may have a spring marching season which is super awesome and makes me really hopeful,” senior Drum Major Lillian Southall said.

 Due to the cancellation of competitions that would ordinarily take up all their time in the fall, from September to November, the band directors decided to work their hardest to make something of this season. The competitions may get rescheduled to the spring when marchers would begin band practices once again and prepare for their show.