Bergjord Boarding

October 4, 2025

By: Luke

Yes, another marching band trip. I have thought about little else for the past 3 months so you get to suffer with me.

This is my 4th year as the percussion instructor for the Aberdeen Central Golden Eagles Marching Band. This is the first year I have noticed a shift in the drumline’s collective ability. We started the year with 9 freshmen vs. 3 sophomores, 1 junior, and 2 seniors. We are a very young drumline. I say all this to drive the point home that we had the most successful season in recent history.

This weekend in our schedule is huge. This is the only competition we currently go to that has a finals round to qualify for. It is always a goal from day one to reach finals at Festival of Bands. We have reached that goal 3 out of the 4 years I have been on board.

We must start at the begining of the day because it is important to note we left Aberdeen at 5:30 am to get to Sioux Falls in time to march the street parade competition. It was a whirlwind morning, but very successful. The parade route was short and right through downtown.

After the parade we had a Jimmy Johns lunch and recovered a bit before we had to get things done for the field competition in the afternoon.

The two very big draw backs of this day were the heat and the wind. These both make competitive marching very difficult. Most bands, including us, had parent volunteers weigh down props by sitting behind them and making sure they didn’t blow away.

We performed very well in prelims and the drumline scored the highest in school history. This is very subjective and the numbers can only loosely be compared to previous years, but we still the dang thing. We made it to finals and performed well in those as well. We scored 8th out of 10 very competitive bands in finals.

It was a very exciting and rewarding Saturday. It was also very full. I got to the school before 5 am, and because we made finals, we didn’t get back home until 2 am. But, you better believe it was worth it.