The San Saba High School Golden Armadillo Band, under the direction of Brian Sours, completed a collective four weeks of summer camp this past week. Summer camp started the last week in July with percussion, color guard, leadership, and new marchers and wrapped up with 3 weeks of full band on August 16. This year’s summer camp was by far the most productive, in-depth, and well-attended summer camp in the band’s history!

The kids had positive attitudes, high excitement, and an eagerness to learn that made each day of camp productive. For the most part, summer band camp was indoors in the Civic Center. With record setting heat, this was a great way to keep the kids focused on learning, but most importantly, safe from unrelenting heat. While nothing can replace the feel and technical demands of a grass field, the concrete floor indoors proved to give us a competitive advantage early on. We were able to put the first two songs worth of drill on (23 sets)! This is the most the band has every put on during summer camp, and is more sets than any other 2A band in our region as of Aug. 15th. Again, this should prove to give us a slight advantage.

However, even with this early advantage, we could easily slip behind if we don’t continue to push ourselves to be a superior band within our region. With this said, I see a different look in the eyes of our band than I’ve ever seen. That look says: "We want to bring success to our band program and school district!" Everyone in band has butterflies inside that say this could be a historic year for the San Saba Band.

The high school band consists of grades 8

th-12th, and there are approx. 70 students signed up for high school band. This is the most students in high school band since 2008! It’s a bit hard to believe we’ve gone from 26 students in the high school band to 70 in 18 months!!! If success and excitement builds programs, you can easily see that there is plenty right now in the Golden Armadillo Band! Please come support all the armadillo organizations at our season opener on Aug. 26th at Rogan Field against Ballinger. Come see the difference!