Jeffrey Hinkle is an ASU Cronkite School of Journalism student assigned to cover Williams Field High School for AZPreps365.com

Although the Williams Field High School Black Hawk Regiment is mainly seen at football games serving as the halftime entertainment, there is another side to the band a lot of people don't know.

Enter the world of competitive marching band. 

Williams Field has created a band dynasty, winning state championships in 2010, 2013, 2016 and most recently in 2021. The championships are nice, but band director Bob Edgar is even prouder of how much the band has grown over the years. 

“When I first got here, I looked down at my roster and I saw like nine kids," he said. "Now we’re competing in Division I.”

Much like football or basketball, the band has its “game days,” as Edgar put it, starting Saturday in Prescott. Marching bands compete in different divisions, much like high school athletics, and are judged on the very same field show that is performed at halftime. 

There is a list of different categories a band is judged:

• Visual Performance - How well the band moves together in time.
• Music Performance - How well the music is played
• General Effect - How well both of them together affected the crowd and the judges.

The governing body that Williams Field competes under is the Arizona Band and Orchestra Directors Association, or ABODA. There are other circuits around the country, most notably Bands of America, or BOA, and the Western Bands Association, or WBA.

There’s even a professional level of marching band called Drum Corps International, or DCI.

Groups from all around the country compete on a tour, putting on shows at high school and college stadiums. The championships are at Lucas Oil Stadium where the NFL's Indianapolis Colts play. 

Williams Field tuba player Gaeb Howell-Martinez was a part of The Academy Drum & Bugle Corps, a member of DCI, that's based out of Tempe. 

“It’s essentially the NFL of marching bands.” Howell-Martinez said. “I learned a lot of things about music theory and playing instruments that I didn’t know before.”

While the band is very competitive, some of the best memories that people make in high school are while marching. For head drum major Tesia Coester, the relationships with her fellow band members are one of the most rewarding moments since they spend so much time together. 

The band schedule is very rigorous. Williams Field athletic director Darrell Stangle jokingly said, “I don’t know who spends more time on the field; the marching band or the football team.”

The band rehearses every Monday, Tuesday and Thursday morning from 6:20 a.m. to 7:20 a.m., and every Tuesday and Thursday night from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m.

Those nine hours of rehearsal culminates into a Friday night football game performance. Then on Saturdays, the band either travels for a competition, which is an all-day affair, or has a “camp day,” which is a rehearsal from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. 

The marching band may only be seen to the general public as the jukebox to the football dance party, but it puts in the same amount of work and hours as all of the other athletic programs.