Saumya Gunampalli

“So we were at Grand Nationals for four days and we had three performances in all. First was prelims, which was with a bunch of bands from all over the nation. After that we had semi-finals, and 37 bands of the 100 bands advanced. We placed really well, so we got to move on to finals. We overall placed fifth with a score higher than we’ve ever received. After the retreat, which is an award ceremony, we did this thing called breaking ranks. Basically you can go all over the field and talk to people from all the other bands and take pictures. I got to meet a lot of cool people and everyone was trading gloves. We have white gloves and other bands had black so it was really cool if you had one of theirs and one of your own. So that's just something people do and it's just like a tradition.”