Show Us Your Spirit: Highlighting the Riverside High School Band

Yeah, good morning, Jocelyn. Of course, when you prep for a football game, a lot of people are thinking, hmm, are we going to hear the band at some point? And of course, we are going to hear them today. Last hour, we talked a little bit to the football team. Of course, all the fall sports as well here at Riverside High. But right now, we're talking to the band director, Mr. Smith. So why don't you tell us how long you've been band director, why you love it so much? So I've been the band director in Loudoun County Public Schools for 18 years. I opened Riverside High School here with Mr. Anderson back in 2015. I was a military musician before my career as a band director, but I love working with kids and teaching them all about music and doing all this stuff. Oh my gosh, well that's awesome. That's really cool that you've really been here since the beginning. Tell us a little bit about what you guys do on a day-to-day basis. I'm sure you practice it a lot. Yeah, so for the marching band, we practice about two to three times a week. during the week on our practice field. And then we play at the Friday night football games. And we compete in the fall at various competitions around the state and around the area. Our concert bands play concerts throughout the year. We've traveled, too. We marched in the London New Year's Day Parade. Oh, wow. Yeah, back a couple years ago. And we're going to go to Walt Disney World this year to march in the Magic Kingdom and do a parade there as well. Okay, that is awesome. Okay, introduce yourselves and then tell us what exactly you do here for the band. Hi, my name is Vishwa Reddy. I'm a senior, and I'm a drum major here with the Riverside Marching Band. Awesome. My name is Mateo Zuloga. I'm a senior as well, and I'm also one of the drum majors here for the Riverside Marching Band. Hi, I'm Colleen. I'm also a senior, and I'm another drum major. Okay, so tell us what a drum major does. You basically are kind of, in a sense, conducting what everybody else is doing? Yeah, so our main job on the field and in the stands is to keep the tempo, signal changes in the music, and just keep everything rolling in practices as well. Yeah, do you like your job? I feel like it's kind of fun. Yeah, this job is really fun, you get to do a lot of fun things within the band, you get to make cool relationships with the kids so it's honestly a really fun experience to have that's awesome, I know your director was talking about going to Walt Disney World this year are you excited for that? Yeah, so excited. London was awesome, and so I know Disney World will be too. Okay, well you guys have done a bunch of pretty cool things, should we hear them? Yeah, I feel like we should, let's do it, go ahead, turn around, get ready Disney World we'll see you here on Fox 5 after a quick break Thank you.