As band students saw head band director Doug Fulwood approach, they stood and walked towards him. The students were quiet, hearing only each other’s nervous breaths.

“Sweepstakes,” Fulwood said.

With that one word, the band exchanged smiles. Sweepstakes means that a band has received 1’s from every judge in everything. It’s the highest ranking a band can receive.

“For me, I was super excited when I heard Mr. Fulwood say ‘sweepstakes’ because it was my first year in Wind Ensemble Band,” sophomore Jessie Hoerth said. “The results from both the experience and contest were fantastic.”

Preparations for the well-deserved sweepstakes began early in January.

“We were very prepared for UIL this year,” Fulwood said.

Held at the school on Monday nights, clinics featuring visiting directors were crucial to prepare the musicians.

“We work very hard to polish up the finer details of our music,” Fulwood said. “It is good that the students get to polish the music and make sure they get the details really well.”

UIL was held in the auditorium on February 28.

“The Region Secretary chose our school because we have all of the resources available to host,” Fulwood said. “We didn’t have to travel and it’s a good central location for 2A and 3A schools.”

That morning, the members of the Wind Ensemble Band arrived at school around 7 am.

“Even though waking up early was very tiring, I was fully dedicated to band,” Hoerth said.

At 8 am, the band began to get ready for the Concert portion of UIL. The band played three songs: “Fantasy on a Japanese Folk Song”, “Declaration Overture”, and “Queen City”.

“Before UIL, I felt really nervous,” freshman Britni Gillespie said. “But afterwards, I felt really good about what the results would be.”

After the Concert, they went into Sight-Reading. In Sight-Reading, neither the students nor the band directors knew what they were going to play.

“This year we were first in the state to read a level four difficulty in Sight-Reading,” Fulwood said. “We played a program that a 4A band might play.”

For Sight-Reading, the students play a piece of music that they have only seen for eight minutes

“The students have to focus quite a bit for the Sight-Reading contest,” Fulwood said.

For some band students, the Sight-Reading is much harder than Concert.

“I like Concert better than Sight-Reading because I am comfortable with the music I already know,” Hoerth said. “Sight-Reading requires a lot of skills activated all at once.”

With students focusing on their skills, nerves ran high.

“Before we played our music in the Sight-Reading portion, I was nervous,” Gillespie said. “When we started playing our music, everything just fell together.”

After performing, there was only one thing they could do: wait for the results.

“I thought we did really good because it was our best performance we ever played,” Hoerth said. ”I was just hoping for the best results after we played.”

And the best results were exactly what the Wind Ensemble band received.