The Petra Zone

Tomorrow, September 17, the UNI Panthers are playing against the Iowa Hawkeyes. The UNI Barking Band - er - marching band - is traveling down to the University of Iowa as well to support our team. We will perform short field shows for pregame and halftime. Sorry to any of you who are Hawkeye fans, but I'm looking forward to watching UNI kick the (crud) out of the Hawks tomorrow! (By the way, the pastor from my church in Marshalltown is a huge Hawkeye fan, but his alma mater is UNI, so he's probably feeling "caught in the middle". . .)

Anyway, the power of a praying man will help the power of a playing man, so keep the band in your "prairz." Pray that we totally rock the joint and have a great time, and stay safe. Pray that the band as a whole represents the university in a profesional manner, and for the Christians in the band to shamelessly represent Jesus without giving in to the worldly pressure around them. (And pray that I don't lose my uniform gloves - that happened last year.)

Band trips - oooh, fun!

Score: 45 to 21 for the Hawks. Darn. Panthers lost. But at least we scored 3 touchdowns so that shows our team still knows how to play football.

When the band marched on the field for the halftime show, I marched on the field in the wrong spot and had to jog 10 yards to my right spot in front of thousands of people. Not cool at all. At least I didn't make any other big mistakes. Our band did "rock the joint" as I had anticipated - our performances on the field went very well (though we were pressed for time and had to compress 3 songs into 5 minutes, which means we had to march/play our Lynyrd Skynyrd tunes at ludicrous speed.) We definitely played our stands music with intensity and excitement. And I didn't lose any parts to my uniform. Yay!

This was at an outdoor field in the mid-afternoon. So the effects are obvious - my face is quite red right now from sunburn. And we only had access to very little water to quench our thirst during those several hours. But the thrill of being in band is worth the challenges to your health and well-being, eh?