‘Make it a Grand Week’- Olivia Lobertini, The Grand on Central

CCHS Marching Cougars win Grand Champion at Upper Cumberland Competition

The Campbell County Marching Band brought home all the first place hardware from Saturday’s band competition.

By Charlotte Underwood

CROSSVILLE, TN (WLAF)- The Campbell County High School Marching Band won Grand Champion at the Upper Cumberland Marching Band Competition held in Crossville on Saturday. When the band buses headed home and reached Caryville, they were greeted by a “police escort and a whole convoy of band parents all the way back to the high school.”

The band was awarded first place drum major, first place color guard, first place percussion and first place in its class! This was the last marching band competition of the season and CCHS finished it with an overall first place win. Judges noted on their score sheet that it was a “Great Performance!!! Best CCHS percussion in 15-plus years.”

According to CCHS Band Director Adam Wright, this win is the “culmination” and the “confirmation” of all the hard work put in by students, teachers, boosters and parents. He also credited the new CCHS band staff of Assistant Band Director Tiffany Braden, Percussion Tech Ethan Clock and Color Guard Instructor Christy Hibbler with contributing to this big win for CCHS, along with Senior Drum Major Joann Begley.

“This is Braden’s first season as a band director and she’s back here at Campell County, her Alma Mater, same as me, she was my student for five years here and then she went to UT, so her coming in here for her first competitive season and winning like this is amazing and shows how much work has been put into this by her and the students and staff,” Wright said.

This band season saw lots of changeups, with the kids learning a whole new style of marching from some of the new band staff, working towards a “more theatrical style” and away from the traditional military marching band style.

“We have a really strong crew this year, and the addition of Miss Braden and her youthfulness and ideas is really helping, and then Ethan Clock is our new percussion instructor and these kids have completely bought in and he has completely changed everything about our percussion section and Miss Christy Hibbler coming in and working with our color guard has been great; these kids have fallen in love with how she’s teaching. She’s strict, but from an individual standpoint she’s showing each of the color guard members what they need and why they need it, and the kids are very accepting and they know that everything she does is done from the heart and from experience and they trust her and that everything she is doing is for their betterment and the betterment of the entire group and that showed off as color guard got first place, not just at this recent competition but at the Clinton competition as well,” Wright said.

It was first place finishes all the way around for the Cougar Marching Band.

He is in his 11^th year as band director at CCHS and said this season has been a “great one with hard work and efforts paying off all around.”

“Everyone has put in so much hard work. In our division we got first place in every category so that’s really exciting. Typically, band competitions are based on size and usually the smaller the band, the lower the score, the larger the band the higher the scores, and there was one band that was a whole lot bigger than us and you expect their scores to be way higher, because they can produce more sound and variety from having a bigger band. So, when they announced the overall grand champion highest scores combined averaged and they announced us, we were very excited about that because we beat one of the biggest and best bands around!” Wright said.

Another proud moment is how good the band scored on percussion and drum major.

“Our drum major scores were a 98 out of 100, and that might be the highest scores we’ve ever received in Campbell County history; I don’t know that for a fact, but I know that it means the world to Joann Begley, our senior drum major, she has worked so hard for so long, along with her co-drum major Jenna Stevens ,” Wright said, adding  that Begley was “one of the best kids to come through the band program, she’s a softball player, does all the AP classes, works a full time job, all while being drum major, she is phenomenal.”

Members of the band’s percussion section show off their first place award.

Assistant Band Director Tiffany Braden is “over the moon” with this win. Braden “took a chance” this year with her first band director position, changing up styles and bringing the marching band “into a more modern” style. Though it was a ton of hard work, the kids were “very receptive” and worked all summer and into the school year to achieve this grand champion win.

 She said that while she knew the competition had been the “best run of the season and the kids had done well,” she didn’t expect to get the overall win up against the much larger band from Soddy Daisy.

“Everyone was really excited and motivated the entire day; I knew it was going to go well, but the other band was over 100 members, and we have 57, so, I thought we could hit the overall win, but I didn’t know about it and then when they said it, I was like ‘holy crap’. I remember we were up there in the stands, and everyone was screaming and cheering. I definitely shed some happy proud tears for those kids, I mean the work that they have put in this entire season has been unmatched. It’s really incredible and I am so thankful they got to see the efforts of that hard work pay off. The first year that you try to do something different, it really is a make-or-break situation because if you change things and it doesn’t go well, then they don’t want to do that anymore. So, I knew how important it was going in that they see that their hard work paid off and it did, we got good scores at our first competition in Clinton and at Karns we got first place in band and percussion, then this time getting first place across the board and getting grand champions I think it really showed them what they are capable of and I am really thankful for that,” Braden said.

The big trophy came back to campus with the Campbell County High School Marching Band.

She also said she was “thankful that the county had created the opportunity for her to have the position as assistant band director in her hometown at her home school.”

“I am thankful for my co-workers, Mr. Wright, Mr. Hendricks and Ed, just the faith that they place in me every day to do all this even though it is going off different things. And a big thank you to my family for sure, I couldn’t do all of this without their support. They understand the late nights and the early mornings and never have a complaint about it and my husband was there with me on Saturday when we won and that made it all the more special. I couldn’t not do this without my family and my coworkers and their support, or without the support of the students,” Braden said.

Band director Adam Wright said the “across the board win was confirmation” of many things, especially that the band was moving in the right direction.

What a day is was for the Cougar Marching Band on Saturday at Crossville.

“A win like this is confirmation that we’re moving in the right direction; it’s confirmation for all of the students that have put in so much time and effort and its confirmation that all of the boosters and parent support is actually benefitting and helping our students achieve that next level. It’s a confidence boost that these students can achieve anything they want and that they can beat anyone of any size at any caliber at anything that they do as long as they put in the effort and work as a team and it showed off this year with the leadership of all the kids and the addition of Miss Braden and the rest of the students and staff members that have joined; everyone is on the same page, everyone is believing in and trusting one another and the sky is the limit for this program,” Wright said.

He also wanted to add a “big thank you to all the parents, boosters, Mr. Hendricks, Mr. Morton, the staff, Miss Braden and the spouses of all of us that put in so many countless hours, and a very special thank you to the senior class for going out on top!”

A NOTE FROM THE GRAND ON CENTRAL: “There is so much good going on in our community, and I want to share all this good with you every Monday here on WLAF in hopes that you will start your week in a grand way making each week a Grand Week,” said Olivia Lobertini, owner of The Grand on Central.

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