Dominating Dragons

By Rachel Schlauch

The Lakeville South Marching Cougars have dominated the marching band world in the past 5 months. With passion, pride and hard work, it shows how much we have grown in the past years. This year our Drum Majors (the leaders of the band) are Ari Mauer, Jacob Welch and Andrew Stotz. The leaders of the colorguard are Tabitha Forrey and yours truly, Rachel Schlauch. Mr. Bieniek and Mr. Castonguay set a goal at the beginning of the season and it was definitely met at the end of the season . 

 In our first competition of the season at the Waseca Marching Classic, we placed 1st in the parade portion of the competition. Our color guard also placed 1st. Later at night we performed our field show, Guardians Born of Fire. The band ended up placing 3rd in the field competition and winning 3rd place overall.

 The next competition was at Rosemount High school for the Rosemount Marching Festival. It was our first year there so we needed to make an impact on our audience to show them who we are and that we were there to dominate. An early morning competition is always a struggle but we did the best we could and got 3rd overall. We also got the outstanding Drum Major award and 1st place in color guard. 

After that morning competition, we headed over to The Music of Knights Competition at Irondale High School. When competitions are at night they are always fun because the adrenaline is there. It was our first year at the Irondale competition so we needed to make the same impact we did earlier. We ended up getting 1st place, as well as getting first place guard. It was the best feeling in the world for everyone in the band knowing that all of our hard work paid off but it didn’t stop there. 

The last couple of weeks were hard and emotional. Freshman were so excited for their first experience at state and same as the sophomores because of COVID. The juniors were just as excited but the seniors. We had all kinds of emotions. The happiness that goes around when it is our last show is an insane amount because it has to be the greatest it’s ever been but we know this is going to be our last and that is hard to deal with. 

Youth in Music at the U.S. Bank Stadium was our last competition of the season. We performed our hearts out at 8:30 in the morning and at 12:45 we were named the Class A State Champions. We also got awarded 1st place in colorguard, winds, visual and 2nd place in drumline. That night we got to perform against the best of the best in each class which was a huge honor. 

At the end of the day we are all proud of each other for all of the hard work we put in. Mr. Bieniek and Mr. Castonguay had a goal that they set at the beginning of the season. Let’s just say that goal went through the roof when we were all falling asleep on the buses with smiles on our faces.