Marching Tigers Off to a Strong Start!

The Beechwood Marching Tigers are to a great start this marching season, with strong finishes at their first three competitions -- Including their first BOA Regional Class Championship since 2019!

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Ryle Tournament of Bands

At their first competition, at Ryle Tournament of Bands, they finished 1st in class and 2nd overall, plus two Visual and one General Effect sub-caption wins in finals—just 2.4 points behind Lafayette.

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Lafayette Invitational

Next up was the Lafayette Invitational, loaded with many of the state’s premier 5A/4A groups. Beechwood again finished 1st in class and 2nd overall, this time behind Ryle (again by just 2.4 points), and we split the two big captions—1st in the Music Ensemble sub-caption Performance and 1st in Music General Effect sub-caption. Both Ryle and Lafayette are arguably the two best 5A bands in Kentucky, which makes those results even exciting for Beechwood.

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BOA Regionals

Beechwood most recently scored their first BOA Class 1A Regional Championship title since 2019 and advanced to Finals on score—a noteworthy feat in a system that tends to favor larger 4A/5A ensembles. Because BOA scoring tends to favor bigger bands compared to KMEA scoring, the goal in finals is to remain first in our class, and simply see how well they can do against the other phenomenal big bands. So, a 9th place finish in finals was a remarkable achievement. We remained first in our class, and managed to finish ahead of two really good large class bands.

This year’s show, Fractured Paradise, is loosely inspired by the Japanese art form kintsugi—mending broken pottery with gold. The idea is that the repaired pottery is somehow more beautiful than the original, and it is a metaphor for human redemption.

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