Marching Band and Color Guard March Into the New Season With a New Director

Sophia Kim, Staff Writer

Sophomore Alice Park and senior Leah Sim practice their routine together in front of the Student Union building, improving their skills for competition and also strengthening their community bond. “Marching band is one big family,” Distante said. “We try to enforce good values into our marching band students. We would love for our students to be competitively successful, but at the end of the day, it’s way more important to us as music directors that our students come out of the program being courteous and generous and empathetic and respectful and all of those great values that we find in good people.”

As marching band begins their pre-season activities for the 2025 field season, the blares of horns, chirps of flutes and sound of flags fluttering in the air can be heard again. Members look forward to meeting new faces and reuniting with familiar ones, under the guidance of a new band director, Matthew Distante.

Distante says he is excited to see what the year holds. As it is his first year taking over the program as the head director, former horn coach Distante predicts that there will be many learning experiences for him. Most of all, he looks forward to working with the leadership team and building a strong community.

“I am very, very excited for this next marching band season,” Distante said. “We have a lot of wonderful leaders going into this next year. The culture is going to be in a great spot, and I think that a lot of students are really excited to kick things back into gear.”

The band expects to tackle improvements such as securing show designs this year with almost 50 more members compared to two years ago, according to drum major and junior Noa Stewart. With more people, the team hopes to stabilize its routines.

“This year, we’re focusing a lot more on the culture aspect of marching band, rather than the competition side,” said Stewart. “Last year we had a lot of moving parts. We had over 30 props in our show, and not a lot of people to carry all those 30 props. So this year, we’re focusing on the kind of ‘bigger is better’ aspect when it comes to show design, rather than smaller and lots of stuff.”

Marching band and color guard members have their eyes set on going to state championships this year, according to color guard captain and junior Chloe McLaughlin. Though preparation for competition is demanding, the community motivates each other through intense rehearsals.

“[Our goal is to] mostly just get better every year,” McLaughlin said. “Hopefully, we can go to state championships this year,” McLaughlin said. “Two years ago we were 11th place on state champs. Last year, we just barely didn’t qualify for state champs.”

The marching band community is closely tight-knit, according to Distante. This year, as the new director, Distante plans to improve many aspects of the band. He also hopes for members to bond over summer break to maintain a strong sense of community.

“Marching band has always been a big family and has always driven home some excellent values in our students,” Distante said. “We are going to focus a lot on accountability, growth and effort, and we are going to focus on serving the school community as a whole.”

Donate to Portola Pilot

$235

$500

Contributed

Our Goal

Your donation will support the student journalists of Portola High School. Your contribution will allow us to purchase equipment and cover our annual website hosting costs.

About the Contributor

Sophia Kim, Staff Writer

Sophia Kim is a staff writer for her first year on the Portola Pilot. She is eager to cover a variety of stories from a wide range of perspectives around and off campus. Writing and drawing are two of her most ardent passions, so she looks forward to applying these skills to contribute to the Pilot. Before finding interest in these hobbies, Sophia has always been enamored by fashion design. She can be found anywhere around Woodbury taking a walk, but her mind is always stuck in first grade when her dream was to become a fashion designer.