There's only two high schools here and they're separated by one road/a ten minute drive. Freedom and Liberty. Our rivalry's only a legend and everyone in the valley blows it out of proportion. They think we're constantly fighting because of small incidents that used to happen.
Our bands represent the British and the colonists. We get the authentic Coldstream Guards uniforms with the real bearskins and belts and everything, and Freedom get the tri-cornered hats and such. We also have fanfare trumpets and bagpipers. They have a fife corps.
At the Freedom/Liberty football game, we always try to out-do eachother show-wise. We always spend a lot of money on the show and the music is often left behind the special effects, but it's kinda cool. This year, we had violin players, pyrotechnics, British flags and a 'rock band'.
Up until this year, we use to have nice amusing message signs during 3rd quarter that would make fun of eachother. But we were only allowed five signs this year. So Ms Z, our uniform lady who's also Freedom's assistant director's mother, wore a kilt, a Freedom fife corps coat (American patriot) and dyed her hair red blue black and gold. It was pretty nifty.
Our bands are very competetive, and Freedom's only beaten us once, ever.
Their directors boast "PA's largest collection of 2nd place trophies."
We're also the only high school band in the world to play with the Coldstream Guards, so a lot of Freedom people are jealous of that.
But other than that, we're really friendly with eachother. I'm on the swim team, and our pool cracked. So we swim at Freedom and a lot of band kids are on their team. We're all best friends. Their coach coached us during pre-season when our old coaching staff resigned, and he'll do the same for post-season. Their assistant coach is also teacher at our school.
The parents are more disrespectful than we are. It's all a big joke. We all love eachother and use eachother as a reason to get better.
Sorry I'm rambling... But I'm in a band mood. Concerts are this weekend (costing approx. 10 grand....) and we go to England in 28 days. Retired Sergeant Major Coates is guest playing trumpet/cornet and Major Jones composed two pieces for us (Spirit of Scotland and Suite for Liberty) that he's conducting in England. (We're debuting his works on Friday!!) I'm nervous about both.