By Maeve Rourke (Sports Editor) and Valeria Araujo (Editor-In-Chief)

Jonathan Law’s band is excited to start this year’s season of competition and fun.

This year, the band is looking forward to expanding not only their group but their skills as well. Band director Mr. Giampietro oversees the jazz ensemble, marching band, and concert band and encourages students in each of his classes to try all three types.

“You can’t win if you don’t play I push my students and set the bar high so they can do great things and then raise that bar higher and higher each year,” Giampietro said. “There is no reason we can’t do better and I will absolutely get them to where they need to go, the sky’s the limit”

Giampietro is hoping to bring the band to bigger and better places.

“Our goal is to expand the band, be more visible, and help with school spirit,” Giampietro said. “We definitely want to be more spirited and more enthusiastic to show how much we love being students here.”

The band is also trying to flesh out their sound to give them a more unique quality over other high school bands.

“We are working on a wide range of music from pop to classical,” junior band member and saxophone player Kyle Shugrue said.

Members perform at a variety of events including home football games, pep rallies, and parades. Last year, they even got to spend the day and perform at Six Flags where they won first place out of all the bands participating in the competition being held there.

“It was an awesome experience,” sophomore saxophone and oboe player Michael Bagdasarian said. “We had to play during the morning, but the entire afternoon I got to hang out with my friends and go on awesome rides making the overall experience amazing.”

Giampietro said the band is ready to showcase that they’ve got spirit and deserve to be heard.

“You can expect us to continue showing our school pride by playing in events in Milford and around the state,” sophomore trumpet player Scott Monforte said.

The band has class during the school day and often practices on the football field. Extra help and practice is completely optional, but many of the band members come in after school on Monday to what they call “Period 9” for this extra practice and to spend time with each other.

“My favorite memory in band is just spending my time with all of my friends in the band it may be small but it’s like one big family,” sophomore flute, piccolo, and saxophone player Hanna Swenning said. “That is also why I continue to do band every year because it is just a very welcoming and fun environment.”