Photos courtesy of Joy Dantuma.

The Washington Marching Band will head off to their fifth and final competition of the season tomorrow.

The Demons are performing in the Class 2A division of the Iowa High School Music Association State Marching Band Festival in Pella, coming off their seventh place finish at the Muskie Invitational last weekend in Muscatine. In their first competition season since 2019, the band is performing the work of Demon alum John Flannery titled “Orpheus,” about the Greek hero endowed with superhuman musical skills. Band Director Don Hughes hopes those mythological qualities have influenced the band as they’ve been working up to his favorite competition of the season, “It’s not a ‘Who wins?’ competition, it’s a rating festival. So our goal is to always get a Division 1. That sort of is that gratifying, we made it, we got there, we did what we wanted to do and we achieved that goal.”

The band performs at 10:40 a.m. Hughes hopes to see plenty of black and orange in the stands to support the students. The public can also hear the marching band in concert at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, October 21st in the Washington High School varsity gym.