The final night of the year came around. The final night where the marching seniors made their final march across the football field.

Seniors were able to be commemorated by their white feathers on their hats and hear their name called out in the beginning of the football game vs TC Williams.

They have came thus far in their marching season: dealing with IB classes, college applications and senioritis. Senior Kathy Strong said, “Senior night is a night of remembering all of my time as a marcher and finally having the perspective to see how the band has changed including how it has changed me.”

The whole marching season began roughly three weeks before school started, so it has helped many students become accustomed to the whole school dynamic, and has allowed rising freshmen to feel at home and feel apart of something bigger.

Strong said, “I didn’t know very many people, but being greeted by fifty other people three weeks before school, gave me that support group that I needed to be stable in my first few weeks of high school.”

Being apart of marching band has not only provided a co-curricular activity for students to list in their college applications, it has also given them more friends, but most importantly, another family.

Senior Nick Russell said, “without marching band, I probably wouldn’t have ever met the friends that I have now.” Marching band alone may have caused some struggles, as do many other co-curricular activities, but it was worth the time and commitment. Going to and from the football away games and marching band competitions gave them all a chance to bond and get to know the people that they wouldn’t normally meet or greet walking through the AHS halls.

The marching band family gave everyone a support system. The upperclassmen could help the underclassmen with difficult teachers that they themselves had before, or difficult classes that they already passed. Senior Marina Chen said “ Marching band has made taught me much about teamwork and effort, if you try hard and be kind to others.”

When performing, every marching student on the field followed the same music and heard the same sounds of the crowd, that allowed them to become the same mind and the same soul when marching. Senior night gave the seniors, along with the marching band alumni students, a moment to be nostalgic and look back at the times where they would be playing the Annandale fight song in the stands or when they would be taking a food break with their friends after they finished performing their well choreographed halftime show.

Chen put it well when she said, “marching band in general will always be in my heart and I will forever remember the laughs, the cries, the cheers, the silences, and the food from the many concession stands, that I’ve shared with my fellow marchers.”

The under and upperclassmen will truly miss each and everyone of the seniors that are leaving, but they will continue to march in their hearts.