For students in marching band, it is a home away from home and a built-in team and family. The amount of work and hours that are put into practices, games, and competitions can often make being in band difficult and tiring, but in the end, the reward of walking off the field with your band family after you just performed for a crowd of hundreds of people makes it all worth it.

For junior Jesus Martinez, marching band is very important, but especially colorguard. Martinez is the FHS colorguard team captain and has been in colorguard for three years.

“I first joined the band in sixth grade,” Martinez said. “Except this was playing an instrument instead of colorguard, and there was no marching involved.”

During Martinez’s freshman year, the marching band made it to state and performed in the Alamodome and the following two years, the band has made it to area finals. Martinez has pursued guard for over three years and is now pursuing a higher, more competitive level of marching band called Drum Corps International (DCI).

“I heard about DCI from one of my colorguard judges that was judging at a marching competition my freshman year. I started pursuing DCI during that winterguard season a few weeks later,” Martinez said.

Martinez auditioned and was offered contracts to perform in Genesis Drum and Bugle Corps the past two years and has been offered various opportunities to audition for other bands.

“I have been doing colorguard as a team since my freshman year, but overall since I was in fifth grade because of my older sister who was also in colorguard during her high school career,” Martinez said. “She was definitely a huge reason why I joined colorguard.”

When asked what might differentiate him from other performers, Martinez’s answer was his desire and drive to perform. DCI offers an extremely busy schedule that can often be difficult for high schoolers to balance with their school life and especially with their high school marching band life. Some of the DCI opportunities include traveling, performing for bigger crowds, and meeting lots of new people: all things that help students develop good skills for life later on.

“The most difficult part of being in colorguard or even marching band as a whole is not giving up after so many tries,” Martinez said.

Martinez has made loads of memories with multiple guard teams, as new team members come and old members graduate. One of his favorite colorguard memories was the lip sync battle of his sophomore year, where the team performed to “Marry You” by Bruno Mars. Martinez plans to continue pursuing DCI and colorguard as he gets older.

According to Martinez, “Don’t be afraid to try new things because it could completely change your life.”