Sam Major

In the moments following the announcement that Mineola had finished second only to Whitesboro in the state marching band finals, I witnessed some strong emotions from young people who had fallen just short of their goal.

I was not perplexed by the outpouring of tears and expressions of what seemed like grief, despite having just accomplished something great, because I could relate.

You see, as a sophomore in high school, I made the ATSSB all-state band as a timpanist and earned first chair. As a junior, I missed making state by one spot – I’ll spare you the details of that experience, other than that pneumonia interrupted my usual practice regimen over the two-week winter break.

My senior year, I qualified for state again. For chair placement, they had us prepare a few pieces of music which we would later perform in concert and chose short excerpts from those pieces once we were in San Antonio for auditions.

One of the excerpts started in the middle of a piece, after tuning changes had occurred, which I neglected and tuned the four drums to the pitches they began the piece with. That was my only error; everything else was as close to perfect as possible: rhythms, dynamics, dampening, other tunings – all were flawless.

Another timpanist (who ended up having classes with a good friend of mine from high school the following year at Texas Tech, proving it is a small world after all) also played her parts perfectly, but also made the appropriate tunings.

So, when the chairs were posted outside our hotel lobby on the sidewalk just steps from the Alamo, I was second out of five, making the top of two ensembles. It was at that moment that my assistant band director, Kevin Gilpatrick, first heard me utter a curse word.

I don’t remember for certain which 4-letter word I muttered under my breath, but either one would have stunned him (as it did) not so much because I had said words some may consider crude, but because I was so disappointed with the result.

Unlike members of the Sound of the Swarm last Wednesday, the news wasn’t the end of a musical accomplishment. I still had days of rehearsal with one of the finest assemblies of young musicians you can find each year, culminating in a concert matched rarely in my playing experiences since (the Lake Country Symphonic Band has done so on occasion).

I knew this, having made the top band before, but I had failed in my estimation simply because I fell shy of my previous mark.

In hindsight, this is obviously not a let-down or a shame whatsoever, but at the time my perfectionism would not allow me to see it as anything else in that moment.

So it was heartening to hear Mineola band director Jim Best providing counsel to his pupils soon after the news broke, letting them know that two things can be true: you did not meet the insanely high expectations you may have had of yourselves and that, “does not make you a bad band,” but a great one.

These students are musicians who have become accustomed to winning, earning three consecutive state marching championships.

For the first time since 2015, they didn’t win, yet they certainly did not lose.

The Swarm is trying to soak in the subtle knowledge that second place is exactly that, no more, no less, but merely second best (for now).