Bergjord Boarding

September 20, 2025

By: Luke

As previously stated in our Washington, DC posts, I am the percussion instructor at Aberdeen Central High School. Right now we are in the thick of our marching season and any travel I do is on a bus with noisy children.

Our first public performances this year were Northern State Universities homecoming parade, Gypsie Days, and the pursuit of excellence in Marshal, MN.

This means a very full day for students and instructors alike. We started the day at the school to get into uniform and load up our 3 coach busses. We bussed to the other side of town where the parade begins and warm up in our staging area. The parade begins and we are one of the first bands in the parade because we have a bit of a time crunch.

We march the almost 2 mile parade and meet up with our busses in a parking lot on the NSU campus. The students get out of uniform, water up, use restrooms, and most importantly eat. The school provides a pretty simple sack lunch for the kids, but getting calories is very important on a marathon day like today.

We then take off for Marshal right after that short break. It’s not a bad drive at all,

Once there we have a little down time before we need to get back into uniform and warm up again. There are various food trucks there are the kids seemed to really enjoy the variety. The wood fired pizza was a popular option. I got wrapped up in talking with chaperones and other directors and didn’t partake.

Our field performance time draws near and we send the students to get into uniform. Shortly after the band goes to a designated area to warm up and I take chaperones and the front ensemble percussionist to where our trailers are parked with all of our equipment and props.

We find our trailers and trailer drivers and start to unload and organize. We need to keep track of where the competition is in the schedule so we don’t miss our time to get staged in place.

It’s sort of like the difference between being up to bat, on deck, and in the hole in baseball. Here we are in the hole.

Here is our front ensemble on deck and starting to focus on their show. We will need to roll all of our equipment on to the field quickly and efficiently.

Here is our band up to bat. This is our first time publicly performing our 2025 field show. We start to refine and add to our show based on how it is received. There are multiple judges that all comment and score on different areas of our show.

We had an excellent day and the students did well for it being their first time out. This is the first weekend of 5 that we are traveling and competing.