By Jessica Fontenot

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The Kapolei Marching Festival on Nov. 12 marked the end of the marching band season and the “Revolution” that has changed the Trojan marching band’s students and their performance since their beginning in June. The show itself was motivational to the band, won them seven trophies and earned them the Sweepstakes award for class AAA, a group for high schools with the second largest band in Hawaii.

“The whole point of the show was that the band wanted to reinvent themselves,” said MHS Assistant Band Director Keane Ishii, who helped direct the band for the first time this season.

In order to do that, the Trojan marching band decided to have a new take on their theme, resulting in “Revolution.” “It’s a different show than what Mililani normally does,” said Band Director Derek Ka apana, “We usually put on a show that’s dark and intense and this was very much the opposite of that.”

Directors were unsure about how the students would adapt to the change of the theme at the beginning of the year. “Our show this year begins really dark,” said Ishii, “and then it kind of blossoms into a … happy show. So I think it was time for it, I think the band needed the refresher.”

Their efforts to make a change showed at Kapolei with their score of 91.77 and festival rating of superior, the highest festival rating judged on the band’s whole performance. The band also received first place awards in the categories “Music Execution,” “General Effect” and “Drum Major” while earning second place awards in “Marching/Visual,” “Color Guard,” “Percussion” and “Soloist” after Kamehameha, who placed first in each category. “I think everyone was just waiting until we got dismissed to actually just burst out and … cheer,” said Drum Major Kailee Goya. The Trojan marching band also won the Sweepstakes award, which is given to the school with the most awards out of their division. “In the past two years … other drum majors got first so then we kind of wanted to live up to that,” said Goya.

After the hard work put into the performance, drum majors were proud of how the season turned out. “It’s been a really tough and challenging season,” said Goya, “As of tonight it showed that all our hard work paid off … and this season has been very, very rewarding.”

Now that the marching season is over, both band directors and drum majors have high expectations for the winter season.