Photo courtesy of Craig McClenahan.

The Marching Demons are hitting their stride coming off of their third competition of the season.

The Washington marching band earned first place in class 3A at the Davis County Festival of Bands Saturday in Bloomfield. This follows third and seventh place rankings they received at the Fort Madison and Mount Pleasant competitions on September 18th. It’s also the first competition season they’ve had since 2019. As many students are marching for the first time, and COVID-19 cases have caused absences in their band and color guard lineup, Director Don Hughes says it’s good to be back in formation again, and he’s glad to have the leadership of his drum majors Mateo Salazar and Bailey Rees who were both were awarded as outstanding in Fort Madison. Hughes shares his outlook for this season, “Well this, the marching thing, this is kind of that one chance since it’s a limited amount of music that we’re studying. The goal is to get as close to perfection as possible realizing that nobody’s perfect, it’ll never be perfect, but boy this is our one chance to get as close as we can.”

The band is busy this week performing at the Brighton and Washington homecoming parades, spirit night and homecoming football game, with a competition at 7:30 p.m. Saturday at Muscatine High School. The Demons’ final competition will be the state marching band festival in Pella on Saturday October 16th at 10:40 a.m. Hughes encourages the community to come support the band at these events.