Annual holiday parade, tree lighting to kick off holiday season

By Thomas Hair Online Copy Editor Dozens of dazzling floats will take to the streets and people will flock to Town Center Plaza for other festivities on Saturday Dec. 3,  as Coppell officially kicks off the holiday season! This year’s edition of the annual parade will feature 37 floats and will follow its usual route travelling west on Parkway Boulevard from its intersection with Samuel Road. The theme of the parade has been announced to be “Hometown Holiday.” Citizens have been encouraged to enter homemade floats as part of this theme. Floats begin lining up at 3:00 p.m., and the parade itself begins at 6:30, after judges have analyzed the floats. About 1,500 are anticipated to be in attendance for…

CHS band to compete in BOA contest

By Annie Wen Staff Writer The CHS marching band students will soon be checking in their uniforms and hanging up their shakos for the year. As the marching season comes to an end the band prepares to go out with a bang. The band’s final contest of the year is the Bands of Americas Super-regionals contest to be held in San Antonio on November 5. “This year’s show is a much different show,” director Scott Mason said. “The level of difficulty is much greater than what we’ve done in the past, so it has been somewhat harder to get it all learned to the high level we like. The BOA contest is a very highly…

Band to go to DMI contest this weekend

By Annie Wen Staff Writer This week the CHS band will be heading out to Duncanville for the annual Duncanville Marching Invitational. This contest is held every year and 20 area bands are chosen to compete based on their past record of success. The CHS band has had a great marching season so far, winning 7 awards at the Mesquite Marching Festival and earning a First Division at the UIL contest. The DMI contest is the second most important contest of the season, the most important being the Bands of America contest that will be taking place next weekend. The band will be competing against long-time rivals Marcus HS and LD Bell HS at both…

Band students interview for leadership positions

Rebecca Neumann Staff Writer This week, many stressed band students roamed the halls of CHS. Why? Because this week many tried out for coveted positions in the band known as section leaders and squad leaders. For those who don’t know, section leaders are in charge of the other people in the band that have their same instrument, flute, trumpet, etc. Depending on the size of the section, they could be responsible for twenty people or sixty or somewhere in between. Squad leaders have a less stressful job though it is equally as important. They are assigned specific members of their section to help them and teach them marching fundamentals. Starting Monday of this week, many…

Band competes in All-Region competition

Rebecca Neumann Staff Writer If you are planning to stay at school for a while after school today, you might want to think again. By five-o-clock, band students from all around the metroplex are going to be flooding Coppell High School to compete in one of the most important competitions of the year: All-Region Band tryouts. While you might think to yourself, ‘I thought the band had been marching all year. When did they have time to learn tons of music?’ that is exactly what you should be asking. Few people outside of band know that along with all of the marching music the band members have to learn, they also must master three etudes…

Band places 15th at state

This weekend I left with the rest of Coppell High School Marching Band to compete at the Bands of America competition in San Antonio. We ended up placing 15th overall, a mere .3 points away from returning to finals. Although this is an improvement over the last several times Coppell has performed at BOA, it has left many band members, including myself, with a bad taste in our mouths. Last year, the marching band did not go to BOA super-regional. Instead, we went to the UIL State Competition, a contest we value above any other. We placed 3rd in the state of Texas. Now BOA is a totally different animal. Instead of judging based on…