Senior Kris Chong has been in Marching Pride of Lawrence Township for two years. He was in the front ensemble for his first year playing percussion, and now he is one of the drum majors.

“I like really getting to know the people. There’s all kinds of people in the band. You kind of find people that have the same interest as you do,” Chong said.

Teamwork is an important part of band, and getting along with the other members has helped them be successful. MPLT kicked off their season with a first place win in the Northwestern High School Marching Band Invitational in September. Tomorrow they head to Lucas Oil to compete at State Finals.

This will be the first time they return to state since 2019. The band has put in a lot of time. According to Chong, they practice six days a week. They also have performances just about every Saturday when competitions start.

“We travel about every weekend. We rehearse almost every day. We have over 200 people that we try to manage, feed and travel. It’s a long process,” Jobson said.

The band spends a lot of time getting the placements right. They’re constantly moving, they have to know where they start/end/ and everything in between. They start planning the show around December of the year prior and, With new people coming in every year some not even having picked up a flag/instrument, drum majors/directors will see the growth throughout the year.

“We’re really looking forward to having a good placement this season,” Jobson said.

The band members have enjoyed putting the show together. This year’s theme revolves around the idea of artificial intelligence.

“This year we really liked the idea of robots, the idea of artificial intelligence. So we said, “Ok, let’s find some music that fits this aesthetic,’”Jobson said

The directors listened to lots of different music and found some music from the movie “Robots” from Pixar that they thought would work well. They used that as a starting point and went away from robots and wanted to do AI. That led to the Christina Perri song “Human,” which has artificial intelligence in it.

“Sometimes the idea starts with just the music and we really like it and go from there, and sometimes like this year, it started with the idea of robots and that led to the music,” Jobson said.

The band brings a lot of energy to the show

“I would describe [the show] as different and a lot more in your face, more loud, a lot more fun than last year,” Chong said.

They hope that energy will translate into a good show Saturday. The band is scheduled to perform at 9:15 p.m. at Lucas Oil Stadium,

“Come watch us,” Chong said