Hello! My name is Deondre Smiles (pictured far left) and I am a rookie in the corps, marching in the cymbal line.
“Have I told you lately how proud of you I am?”
These words from our corps director, Eric Molho, perfectly summed up what was an awesome show day for Minnesota Brass. Today was an extremely important day, because not only would the corps perform in a judged show for the first time this season, but rookies in the corps, such as myself, would experience a drum corps show as a member of MBI for the very first time. We started the day off early, with breakfast, and then a short, yet efficient rehearsal. Despite the time crunch, we were able to rehearse through all movements of the show, and get a full run in to prepare us for the evening. We then had two short hours to eat, shower, pack and load. Each section of the drum corps took special care to clean the wonderful facilities we got to rehearse in this weekend (Thank you, Alexandria!). Then, it was off to make the 3+ hour drive down to Mankato!
Once we arrived at the show site, we grabbed some dinner, got into our half-unis and warmed up for the show. In what seemed like only a short time later, we marched to Blakeslee Stadium and took the field for our performance! The corps had an amazing show! The crowd was excited to see us perform, and it felt like the corps fed off of that energy to deliver what our program coordinator Joel Matuzak described as the best first show Minnesota Brass has ever had in its history. After our performance, many corps members (such as myself) took advantage of our early performance time to watch other corps, such as the Colts, Madison Scouts, and Bluecoats (all with Brass alumni marching or teaching with this summer) perform—they were all fantastic corps to be in the audience for! Then the show was finished, and we all piled back on our buses and headed back to Eden Prairie, where our cars were waiting to bring us back home to our comfortable beds, after a long and rewarding three days of rehearsal. We grew closer together as a corps, we made our show and individual performances much better, and it came through in a wonderful final performance. We made our corps director proud..and I know it made me proud to be a member of Minnesota Brass. I am eagerly looking forwards to seeing what the rest of the season will bring.
FAWK
