MARCHING AHEAD: Rattler Band earns superior ratings, prepares for Area Marching Contest

As San Marcos High School’s marching band turns toward the home side, a wall of sound projects throughout the stadium as the performers begin their show.

The Rattler Band’s performance, “Rogue,” features the music of Hans Zimmer, Sam Smith and Carol Brittin Chambers. The 2022 show has themes of spy espionage with a red eye — which is included on the band’s props, uniforms and drill — as a central focus of the show.

San Marcos High School Band Director Peyton Grover says it has been easy for the students to get into this year’s show.

“The music is just really aggressive and it’s just great music,” Grover said. “Most of it is original stuff that [Chambers] wrote. But there's some music from Hans Zimmer and Sam Smith in there. [Chambers has] a lot of tropes that you find in spy movies built into the music. So, the theme is really easy for the kinds to get into because it’s very clearly spy espionage kind of stuff.”

The Rattler Band has enjoyed a successful season so far, which includes earning straight ones — the highest rating a marching band can receive — at the UIL Region 12 Marching Contest for the first time since 2014. The band has also received multiple first place awards throughout the year. They earned first place in their division at the Capital City Marching Festival as well as best percussion and best color guard. The band also won first place at the Seguin Marching Festival and Comal Classic Marching Contest.

Grover said earning straight ones at the region marching contest was a big goal coming into the year.

“You go into a new program, especially a program that hasn’t been wildly successful, that’s a huge step,” said Grover, who is in his first year as the head band director. “So, straight ones for the first time since 2014 was pretty awesome … It kind of solidifies that you’re at a higher level proficiency and everyone recognizes it. That’s cool. And, on top of that, we’ve gotten a lot of first places this year.”

Grover attributes the success to a good team teaching the kids, including assistant directors Shelbi Tippie and Damon Knight and color guard director Rylee McMullen, as well as the students being bought in.

“It’s really a total meet in the middle combination of we have good teachers and we have good kids that have bought in,” Grover said. “The kids rise to the occasion, and rise to the demand we put on them, and that’s awesome.”

David Underwood, San Marcos Consolidated ISD Coordinator of Fine Arts, said the district is proud of how hard the marching band has worked this season.

“It’s really just a unique show that they just worked very hard on to be able to create the shapes and images and map that you see on the field. So, we’re very proud of the efforts that they’ve done to make that happen,”  Underwood said. “The music itself, really they have worked extremely hard. We’ve done some great things over the last year to help with that. A lot of our students have been taking private lessons that the district itself has paid for. It’s really helped the musicianship of our students.”

Grover said he’s most proud of how the students are “showing up and having a good time.”

“We’re always going to be proud of our kids. Here we’re proud of our kids unconditionally because they deserve that,” Grover said. “But I’m genuinely proud of them for showing up every day and working hard to make good art. I tell them that that’s the greater lesson here is we’re learning how to work as a team, ‘You’re working hard because you’re here’ and this is a lot of time. It’s a big commitment. That part is the easy part. The learning of strong work ethic is easy. But learning how to collaborate with others and learning how to treat people and learning how to enjoy your time with people, that’s the tricky part. I feel like they’ve done really great with the relationship building thing and the attitude thing, and I’m totally proud of that. We’ve had a blast all year.”

The Rattler Band’s competition season continues at the UIL Area D Marching Contest on Saturday at Heroes Stadium in San Antonio. The band will perform at 4:15 p.m., while competing against 23 other bands across the region to advance to the area marching finals Saturday night. The top five bands in the finals competition will advance to the UIL State Marching Contest at the Alamodome in San Antonio on Nov. 7.

“We’d love to have huge community support,” Underwood said. “If they could be present, we would love to have the extra noise and the extra ‘Rattler Up’ feel and presence because the support of the community and the volume of the community present at Heroes Stadium does actually have an impact on the judges, I think, in a positive way. We’d love to have additional support and additional yelling and screaming for the Rattlers.”

To purchase a ticket to the UIL area marching contest visit https://events.ticketspicket.com/r/agency/4e5ad12e-aa84-444a-990d-1d531b..., or scan the QR code below.