Speaking of being judged. Marching Band is a sport because we are judged at competitions. In Marching Band you have what is called MPA, or Music Performance Assessment. At MPA you perform for judges who judge you on Marching Technique, General Effect, Auxiliary Effect, Drumline, and Drum Major To start …show more content…
off, Marching Band is a sport because it's performed on a collegiate level. Most major universities and colleges with football teams have a Marching Band which performs during half-time and in the stands. They are required to audition for this months before they are even accepted into the band. Clemson University auditions requirements are to play their fight song Tiger Rag and Alma Mater, as well as the chromatic scale two octaves up. Now this sounds simple but it requires days of practice countless recordings and even when all of this is achieved you still have to wait weeks sometimes months to hear back from where you applied. Just as a collegiate "athlete" you play for a crowd of people all judging and watching what you've worked so hard to perfect.
Performance.
They give comments and a scoring that goes from Poor(lowest) to Superior(highest). At the end of the night, they give awards for each category of judgment in every class(1A-5A) and announce the overall winner of the competition of the competition. Now if I'm correct this sounds like cheerleading a well-known sport across the nation , leaving me to wonder if cheerleading is considered a sport-- why isn't Marching Band. ?
On the flip side of the coin, it could easily not be considered a traditional sport. It doesn't have a scoring method or ranking system to say who's best, we do have kids who work outside for multiple hours a day, most days a week to perform on 1 day for not an hour or even half that. Usually, we get Ten minutes to perform our and get off the field so we don't get penalized.
In conclusion, Marching Band is a sport because we perform on a collegiate level and at competitions. I invite you to come see us at any practice, game, or performance. I'm very sure you'll see I'm right by the time we're
done.