The Tyrone Area Marching Band took first place at the chapter championship competition for the sixth consecutive year at IUP in Indiana on Saturday, October 20. The competition marked the end of the martching band’s regular competition season.

The band has now been undefeated in regular competition for six years. Six consecutive chapter championship banners hang on the wall in the high school band room serve as a testament to the band’s accomplishments.

“I’m feeling really excited because it is my first chapter,” said eighth grade trumpet player Rebekah Schleppy.  She also said “I think if we work really hard, we will do really well.”

The band competes in the Tournament of Bands circuit. T.O.B. is a national circuit consisting of over 400 hundred schools across the east coast. These schools are divided into “chapters”. Tyrone is in the eleventh chapter and is in direct competition with Huntington and Elk County Catholic.

The band has been working since mid-summer on their 2013 show entitled “Flight”. They have won every competition so far this year, and have won many of the caption awards, like High Drum Major, and High Auxiliary.

Tyrone has been slowly edging ahead of their competition all season, finally pulling an incredible 4.7 points ahead of Huntington, their closest competitor in the chapter. The band scored an 88.50, out of 100, at the Championship Performance.

Bands are scored in six categories. The first category is Visual with subsets in general visual, individual visual and visual effect. The other category is Music, with the same subsets. Auxiliary, Percussion, and Drum Major are also scored, but with no immediate effect on the overall score.

With their first place finish at Chapters’, the band has clinched their spot for the Atlantic Coast Championships on November 2nd. Tyrone is seeded fourth on the Atlantic coast going into ACC’s.