THORNTON, Colo. — On the third stop on our “Hearts of Champions" tour, we visited Horizon High School in the Adams 12 Five Star school district.
The marching band made school history last year by qualifying for the Colorado Bandmasters Association’s 5A state championship finals. The band has 126 members and the school’s Director of Bands Tim Dailey believes the hard work they put in at summer band camp has a higher purpose.
“For me, band camp is that the kids get to walk into school with 126 friends,” Dailey said. “[They] get to know my friend community, the instructors, and have some confidence behind the space. They really change the first day walking into high school.”
Dailey grew up in the area and marched with Legacy High School down the street from Horizon. He’s in his eighth year teaching marching band at the high school and said this is part of giving back to the community where he grew up.
“There’s something about home that you come back to,” Dailey said. “Being somebody from the area, I always knew there’s a ton of kids there, there’s a ton of support for the music, support for the arts.”
Dailey’s marching band spent their two-week summer band camp learning how to march, play instruments, and spin flags for their competitive season. These camps are held in the heat of the summer usually starting around the first weeks of August. They run about 10 hours a day. Band members do calisthenics, run, and get in shape so they can learn to perform an 8-minute show.
“We were here in the smoke, in the heat, it was really hot this year. It was kind of brutal,” Dailey said. “So, it’s our way of putting them all together and getting them involved with our community which is kind of the most important thing.”
The band is learning a show where they’ll perform while marching, running, playing their instruments and tossing flags. Senior clarinet section leader Brooklyn Spencer believes the skills she’s learning now will help her on and off the practice field.
“Making sure that we understand where our places are, where our music is and just really being together,” Spencer said. “It just really helps with my memorization and everything that I need to do for my other classes.”
Last year, the marching band finished eighth in the 5A semi-finals by less than one point. This year, the group is looking to change that outcome in the fall. Dailey said that the close finish last year is their motivation through band camp.
“We barely squeezed in, it was by a point zero-five,” Dailey said. “As a director, it’s always been a dream to get into finals and now we go, ‘Cool, we want to stay here, we want this to be our home and the expectation of excellence on being that finals performance.”
It’s a feeling of pride that Dailey hopes reaches his students so they can feel proud of their hometown too.
“We just want everybody to be part of it and to experience the things that I’ve experienced,” Dailey said. “It sets them up for success when you walk in with that air of confidence and know that you belong somewhere and you’re here with us in our community, it’s one of the reasons why I do this.”
Editor's note: This story is part of 9NEWS' "Hearts of Champions: Marching across Colorado" series, where we're highlighting marching bands across the state.
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