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The 2025 Band of America New Mexico Regional marching competition took place at New Mexico State University on Saturday with one Las Cruces band finishing in the top five.
Organ Mountain High School director of band Shawn Silva said that this competition was a great learning experience for the kids and will help set them up for competitions later in the year.
“We finished fifth but we had a lot of fun,” Silva said. “It was a really good time and the kids learned so much throughout the day.”
OMHS’s show was titled "Good Night Moon" and is broken up into four different sections capturing what humans see in the night sky.
“If you ever think about Las Cruces as the sun is setting, you have that glow to the west but as the moon is coming up in the east, you get that other glow, so it is really just capturing the night sky,” Silva said.
The BOA marching competition is early in the marching band season, but Silva said their emphasis on student leadership and students' ability to help teach music, marching and everything else that comes with marching helped them out.
“We really focus on student leadership and being a selfless servant to everyone around them in the band and I think that really helps our program excel in what we want to accomplish because they are working for each other,” Silva said.
Silva also highlighted the support that the parent volunteers provide in helping make sure the kids are fed, uniforms are clean, and they have water to drink.
Bands of America is different from most marching competitions in the area. BOA is a national competition that holds regional competitions with winners from those competitions moving to the next round.
Steven Smyth, band director for the New Mexico State University marching band, said that this competition brings in a lot of people from the region and that competitions are a “gigantic deal” for high school bands.
“We had 18 bands this year and the one from the farthest away would be Rampart High School from Colorado,” Smyth said.
Clovis High School from New Mexico took home first place at the competition with a score of 75.2 points. Two Texas schools, Eastlake and Eastwood, finished second and third with scores of 73.75 and 73.125 respectively. OMHS scored 71.95 points.
Tournament of Bands, also hosted by NMSU, will take place on Nov. 1.
