Rock Hill Band creates a first with BOCO

Jacob Turner, Staff|November 17, 2021

Jacob Turner
While dancing to hit songs from 2021 and talking to his friends, freshman Cohen Terry said, “the fact that I knew everyone there,” was his favorite part of the band homecoming.

While the homecoming dance is traditionally held on the Saturday after the homecoming game, the Rock Hill Band students couldn’t go because of a marching contest the same night of the dance. So the band directors and student leaders came together and planned to create an event for the hardworking band students. And therefore, the plan for BOCO was put in motion for Nov. 13 at RHHS.

While the school’s homecoming dance followed an enchanted forest theme, the homecoming dance theme for the band students was based on their contest show Dreams of Icarus.

According to their band section, students brought in specific items to help with the event. For example, the flutes section was required to bring drinks for the dance. While other sections, including the mellophone section, were needed to get food.

The night included dancing, food, photo background and music by the same DJ of the RHHS homecoming dance.

Drum Major Isabella Trevino who is one of the drum majors for the Rock Hill Marching Band said that she loves designing and that envisioning the design for the dance was one of her favorite things about the dance. “So the inspiration was that we already had these columns that we used for our show, so we might as well put them to use at our dance, [and] it was related to Icarus, so the theme was kind of Roman with vines everywhere, and I thought it would be a pretty cool idea.” said Trevino.

Rock Hill Band Director Nathanial Neugent says the reason for hosting the band’s homecoming dance was to replace when the students missed the actual dance due to the UIL Area marching contest day.

“Since we had UIL Area finals the night the original HOCO dance was scheduled, we wanted to give our students the same opportunity for celebrating homecoming as the rest of the school by hosting our dance later,” said Neugent.

Marching season can be draining on students’ mental health and the band directors take notice.

“It certainly helped the parents know that we’re considering the students’ thoughts and well-being with regards to how grueling the marching season can be in Oct. and that we would provide them the same opportunity after our season was done.” said Neugent.

 

Photo and Captions updated on Nov. 19 by Jacob Turner