New marching bands abound for this year’s festival

New faces will appear at the Festival of Bands competition Saturday in Sioux Falls.

Lots of Bison, Cavaliers and Vikings.

It’s the first year that the new Ben Reifel Middle School, new Jefferson High School and Augustana University will join the festivities.

The Festival of Bands is one of the region’s largest competitions, with nearly 50 schools participating. The four Sioux Falls public high schools and O’Gorman High School host the event each year to showcase the local talent and raise money for their programs. They don’t compete, leaving that to the visiting bands, but all five schools will perform during the field exhibition finals Saturday evening at Howard Wood Field.

Ben Reifel will march in the exhibition Saturday morning.

This is the first year for the recently opened Jefferson, which will bring the Cavalier mascot and a splash of green to the field.

It also means more parents to help out. The festival leans heavily on the bands’ supporters – about 400 volunteers in all – to make it work. The event is expected to draw 15,000 people from South Dakota, Minnesota, Nebraska and Iowa.

“We are very happy to have them as part of it, bringing in their talent and volunteers,” said Lisa McElrath, marketing chair for the festival’s committee.

The Augustana Vikings revived a marching band this year. It has been decades since the university had a formal marching band. The music students would put together the band for homecoming festivities into the early 1990s, but the early 1970s was the last time there was a full-on effort.

This is the 34th year of the festival.

The parade competition begins at 8 a.m. near Covell Lake in Terrace Park. The bands march west on Madison Street, turn south on Lake Avenue and continue past the judges to West Avenue.

The preliminaries of the field competition begin at 10:15 a.m. at Howard Wood Field. The 10 highest-scoring bands compete in a one-class final beginning at 6 p.m. Trophies are awarded to the five places in the finals. All of the field competition will be livestreamed at FestivalOfBands.com.

Augustana will perform its field show at 5:30 p.m. and then play the National Anthem to kick off the finals.

For many years, the festival parade was a downtown event, but as the number of bands grew, so did the logistics of getting so many people in and out. McElrath said they’d love to bring the parade back downtown, but there are a lot of hurdles to clear for that to happen.

Even with the parade site so near Howard Wood, the schedule is incredibly tight, she said.

“It’s a good problem to have,” she said.

McElrath is a 2007 graduate of O’Gorman who participated in the festival. She said city schools look forward to hosting the event each year for the students from around the region.

“I think there is so much pride that goes into putting this on in our hometown,” she said. “People get to experience Sioux Falls, and we get to show off our talent too.”