Posted by longtime lurker on October 24, 2000 at 17:05:30:
In Reply to: Sad. posted by Kayura on October 23, 2000 at 14:39:15:
Almost the same thing happened to me.
My freshman year in high school was great, out of a band of 135 we had six tuba players: 1 senior, 2 juniors, 2 sophomores, and me. By the end of the first week of band camp, most of the tuba players had decided that, if based only on my desire to play, that I would be the principal tubist. Our section leader was our lone senior tubist. She was very nice, and even though she was actually the band's 2nd lieutenant (we kept the military rankings even after fifteen years of being corps style), and the actual section leader was one of the juniors, she was in charge of our section. After marching season, I was moved into the top band as third chair. Before long it became apparent (to the band director) that I would be 1st chair.
When spring football practice came around, one of the junior tubists quit band because he earned a spot on the varsity football team finally. This left us in an odd position due to the following:
I, a long-haired, all-in-black heavy metal concert T-shirt kind of guy, was the best player. The two sophomores were: a big ol' 6'3" 300 lb redneck, and an openly gay black dancer. There was also the remaining junior, our section leader, a mild-mannered, bookish, devout Christian. At the end of that year, he decided, along with a euphonium player and a trumpeter (all male) to become cheerleaders. To this day, I do not know why he did it. Naturally, I became the section leader. We had a great deal of fun my sophomore year.
There was one point in our show where the tubists were at the back of the band in a clump on the fifty yard line with no one on either side for 10 yards. We did what came naturally during a scatter drill, we (with permission from the BD) picked up our dancer/tubist who was doing the full splits and rotated him around in the air. Needless to say, while amusing, this bit did not make it to our contest show.
The next year, our big old redneck tubist became band captain, while I remained section leader. Even though he, ostensibly, outranked me, I was still in complete control of the section. In fact, since we had no freshman that year, and only one sophomore, we were a rather good section that year.
My final year in high school I was the only senior tubist. There was one junior, no sophomores, and 2-3 freshman, a number that varied throughout the year. I was band captain, and in spite of this, I retained complete control of the section. Unfortunately, as evidenced by the "rotating tubist" above, our band director did not have the best judgment, and consequently, the band had declined over my four, (3.5 actually), years in high school. But we had fun. Then came college. A place that, above all, exemplifies "one time at band camp..."
Randomly,
A longtime Tubenet lurker.