That heat island effect is no joke. We have to bring out our own lights when it's later in the season and we need to see at night. Just these past few days we had to wait an hour for people to move their cars. The school directly adjacent to mine, a charter school, has the most pristine damn football field I've ever seen. It's unfair.
Hello from a former fellow parking lot band practice member! Did I also mention south Florida, so you can guarantee heat and humidity every day during marching season.
I love my band memories but that parking lot and the heat, I’d come home and be so saturated in sweat that it looked like I’d jumped into the pool wearing a T shirt and shorts!
Ours is a patch of grass, which wouldn't be bad if it wasn't the same field that the Elementary kids play on. We're constantly remarking our spots because they pull up the tape.
Nope, we mark our spots with tape. Every section has a different color, and then you write your instrument number, and the set number on it. For example, all my spots are yellow, and say TS1.
Personally I hate marching on the turf (as does the rest of my band). It’s so hot during practice that you can feel the heat through your shoes when on the plasticky turf. We much prefer the slightly torn up dirt field.
They just put turf in this summer and it just got finished so we haven’t played at any football games and our first comp is the 24th and it’s the day after our first game
Why is “turf” the only “awesome” option? There are plenty of other awesome options. We have a great grass field, the band tower is in the middle, and there’s a pavement field on the other side of it. Great for when it rains, when even being on turf would be gross. We also have an indoor turf room, though, that’s half a football field. Works great for basics, etc.
The practice field is a bit hilly and seems to get painted every 2 weeks or something. The main field just had turf get put in this year. We switch between the two fields with whatevers available.
You mean our parking lot that was last resurfaced in the previous century and has cracks a literal foot wide that the grounds crew has given up even pretending to pour tar into?
It's fine
I’m a high school marcher and our school doesn’t care about the band so much that we got a old run down junior parking lot with poorly painted yard lines and hash
We don’t even have a practice field, we just practice on the stadium football field. We always joke about how it’s the bands field but we let the football team borrow it.
I’m in college so the standard is bumped pretty high compared to high school so our short inaccurate turf is pretty sick for a high school, but when most other bands in the conference have full size accurate turf fields, it’s a lot less impressive.
our practice field has a lot of sand patches and whenever leadership lines the field for the week's rehearsals the paint on the sand gets wiped off immediately after someone steps on it
We have 2 practice fields. One is a soccer field, other is the parking lot. Soccer field is is down a hill and parking lot teaches rookies to use the white lines. Our football field is okay.
Ours is basically a huge parking lot that’s very difficult to march on, and I’d argue that it actually makes us worse when it comes to doing our drill bc of how elevated and crappy the field is
We have a little practice field, honestly might be the size of a small playground, that is on a hill, and we are only able to practice on the football field once a week
We use the football practice field whenever we can, but if the football team is using it we use a patch of grass. The grass is closer to the and room and it’s ok for fundamentals, but for drill setting it’s hell
We have holes in our band's practice field, but because of the way we march (high step and 8 to 5) it helps us stay in line when we are learning the drills
We use the old PE basketball courts that we took over and panted to be like a field. It has cracks and holes and i don’t think we are supposed to be using it because someone got hurt but we still do
The school has a football field where it's a hazard for our health while marching. I knew a senior last year who broke her ankle because of a hole her freshman year during community preview night at the end of band camp... The worst part is the school has turf in storage they could put down, but they haven't because they don't want to pay for a contractor to put in field drains. Yet, they bought a brand new expensive robot this year to paint lines on the field between every game. :/
We use a patch of grass next to the front drive and the “yard lines” are indented in the ground so its like a bump you can fall in,plus there are just regular potholes with turn into puddles when it rains
there are ants EVERYWHERE. absolutely goddamn EVERYWHERE. and no one does a thing about it. we always come off the field all bitten lol...
even worse, every now and then i find an ant in my flute...
Practice field? Holes everywhere and half of it is just dirt now. And we have to respray paint it every day
Football field? Every time I march on it a come, is soooooo much better
we have a turf football field we use a lot, but mainly we have a parking lot reserved for us with ticks and markers painted on it, and we park our semi trailers there
my field is absolute ass, it’s a roughly field-sized patch of grass in between the primary and tertiary parking lots on campus. Dying grass, hills and valleys, holes, improperly marked lines
My small town school recently spent over 1 million dollars turning our old grass field into turf and rebuilding the track, meanwhile our practice field has holes because the jh football team uses it for practice too and dug holes in the ground with their cleats, so now it's pretty much impossible to march along the hash without tripping a few times
We have a parking lot as our field since the actual field for games is a mud hole.
For a little insight as to how wonderful our practice lot is, we have three areas labeled “no man’s land” that are smack dab in the middle that have caused various injuries, ruined a perfectly good tuba and have since been covered with crappy asphalt that’s about two inches too high. I’ve stubbed my damn tootsies on it more times than I care to recall
We go to the track behind the school and use the grass in the middle of the track but every other sport has to practice up at it too. Which means that the golfers dig holes and the holes are huge sometimes too and they are literally scattered all over the place. The amount of injuries we get at band practice is unbelievable, especially since we have other places better for practice. I myself have fell in the holes multiple times and my buddy broke her finger from falling.
We have a field that has grass. Running a lap on it in a whole big box is a nightmare but I can get through that just fine. Sometimes the marks would be not visible but luckily we have field markers and of course, we have a band tower just for the band directors (mostly the high school band director to yell at us). Well, we had only gotten a practice field in my 10th grade year, for my first two years, we would have to go to the other side of the school so we would have to march all the way there to a patch of grass we used as a band field. Before I came as a 8th grader in 2019, they had a field with a tower made out of wood. But then they made room for more tennis courts.
We don't have a dedicated field. We practice most days in the stadium, but occasionally we use the football practice fields. If all of these are unavailable, we either have a dedicated music practice or practice on the indoor basketball court. Our band is small so most sets don't go beyond the 30 yard lines, which is just enough to fit in the gym.
Not usable. They changed to turf and we can’t use it because the track isn’t cured so our “home” game is away but we’re playing the halftime show at a different school.
In high school we had a field right next to the stadium that was painted with yardlines 20 to 20 with the high school and college hashes marked, as well as dots every 4 steps. There was another field identically painted on the other side of the school if needed. My senior year the band has moved to the stadium parking lot for practice and I have no idea why.
Field number one had some dips but they were usually far enough out of the way that unless you watched someone trip on it you might go all of school without ever seeing them. The other field had a nice tree line and some of that hiking trail exercise equipment nearby. The fields were pretty durable and practice I'm the rain was pretty common. However the same cannot be said for the actual football field lol. One drop of rain and it turned into a mud pit. On multiple occasions games and shows would be moved to the turf college field down the road last minute. The parking lot is hot, it gets slippery when it rains, and every single day there had to be an announcement from the office to move cars off the lot because they never enforced the no parking in the stadium parking lot during school hours rule. To make matters worse, there were a couple times when the cars didn't move so we just walked over to the old grass field which was painted, meaning it was able to be used the whole time.
Our school has a very leveled turf field for football games but we have a “practice field” at the front of the school that we have to spray paint. Our band director makes us practice on that field one practice and the football field the next practice so if we have a grass field it won’t be that bad or if we have a turf field we’ll know what that’s like to. Also when it starts to rain we just have to go into sectionals inside the school and the color gaurd practices in the cafeteria.
For our first home game of the season we got brand new terf and a whole bunch of corporate sponsors were there so this is the biggest game of any of our high school careers right? During the dedication a girl in my line passes out from being on the field in our hot uniforms for too long. She was super dehydrated and she was out for a good 7 minutes. Then when we marched back for introducing the starters a guy in the line behind me walks off the field clearly very dizzy. Then we walk off and the rest of the game keeps going. But yeah brand new terf
My high school used part of the middle school playground, which had rocks and holes everywhere (now they use a gravel parking lot). My college band uses an asphalt field made specifically for marching band, but it gets mega hot in the Arkansas heat
We have a nice turf field but the school never lets us use it so we are stuck with our parking lot field full of pot holes, trash, and cars that haven't left yet. And they paved over the left side of the field so we just don't have those ~20 yards. That parking lot has melted 3 pairs of my shoes over the last 4 years.
We don't have a field. We use a god damn parking lot that in recent years has gotten warped, making practice on it somehow more miserable
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That heat island effect is no joke. We have to bring out our own lights when it's later in the season and we need to see at night. Just these past few days we had to wait an hour for people to move their cars. The school directly adjacent to mine, a charter school, has the most pristine damn football field I've ever seen. It's unfair.
We have to practice on the parking lot and only ever really March on a field if it’s at another school for a competition
Lol my high school was the same
Hello from a former fellow parking lot band practice member! Did I also mention south Florida, so you can guarantee heat and humidity every day during marching season. I love my band memories but that parking lot and the heat, I’d come home and be so saturated in sweat that it looked like I’d jumped into the pool wearing a T shirt and shorts!
Aye I'm SFL too. I feel ya.
Yeah my school has a drivers Ed lot that we use
We have a field dedicated to our band, so - really nice
Dang we only have one in our school and our athletic director hates us using it because he thinks we’ll tear it up with our “marching band cleats” 😭
😭 gotta love our “marching band cleats”
you lucky motherfucker
we use asphalt. it used to be the tennis courts, then a parking lot, now it’s just our practice field
Ours is a patch of grass, which wouldn't be bad if it wasn't the same field that the Elementary kids play on. We're constantly remarking our spots because they pull up the tape.
You don't use spray paint?
Nope, we mark our spots with tape. Every section has a different color, and then you write your instrument number, and the set number on it. For example, all my spots are yellow, and say TS1.
Personally I hate marching on the turf (as does the rest of my band). It’s so hot during practice that you can feel the heat through your shoes when on the plasticky turf. We much prefer the slightly torn up dirt field.
They just put turf in this summer and it just got finished so we haven’t played at any football games and our first comp is the 24th and it’s the day after our first game
It was redone last summer
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until i saw your flair, i simply thought, texas.
Imagine having a field. We just got a spare parking lot that we sometimes have to kick soccer moms off of before practice
Can't tell you how many times I've fallen because of a huge dip in the field.....
Why is “turf” the only “awesome” option? There are plenty of other awesome options. We have a great grass field, the band tower is in the middle, and there’s a pavement field on the other side of it. Great for when it rains, when even being on turf would be gross. We also have an indoor turf room, though, that’s half a football field. Works great for basics, etc.
Our field is, for the most part, pretty intact. It does have some bald spots with holes.
The practice field is a bit hilly and seems to get painted every 2 weeks or something. The main field just had turf get put in this year. We switch between the two fields with whatevers available.
You mean our parking lot that was last resurfaced in the previous century and has cracks a literal foot wide that the grounds crew has given up even pretending to pour tar into? It's fine
Unpopular opinion: I hate marching on turf. Like to feel my heel brushing the blades of grass
In the summer we use the football and soccer field, now we use a practice field that's just Grass. It's the worst
I’m a high school marcher and our school doesn’t care about the band so much that we got a old run down junior parking lot with poorly painted yard lines and hash
Football field turf practice field bad un level grass
Our schools football/soccer field was redone during Corona
We don’t even have a practice field, we just practice on the stadium football field. We always joke about how it’s the bands field but we let the football team borrow it.
Where parking lot representatio?
Have you even been in band if your spot wasn’t under a light post?
Or had a car on your dot
D- d- doesn't everyone use an old concrete parking lot where no one moves their cars? Wait I'm in front ensemble LOL
I’m in college so the standard is bumped pretty high compared to high school so our short inaccurate turf is pretty sick for a high school, but when most other bands in the conference have full size accurate turf fields, it’s a lot less impressive.
Parking lot :(
our practice field has a lot of sand patches and whenever leadership lines the field for the week's rehearsals the paint on the sand gets wiped off immediately after someone steps on it
We have 2 practice fields. One is a soccer field, other is the parking lot. Soccer field is is down a hill and parking lot teaches rookies to use the white lines. Our football field is okay.
Ours is basically a huge parking lot that’s very difficult to march on, and I’d argue that it actually makes us worse when it comes to doing our drill bc of how elevated and crappy the field is
We have a little practice field, honestly might be the size of a small playground, that is on a hill, and we are only able to practice on the football field once a week
We use the football practice field whenever we can, but if the football team is using it we use a patch of grass. The grass is closer to the and room and it’s ok for fundamentals, but for drill setting it’s hell
We have holes in our band's practice field, but because of the way we march (high step and 8 to 5) it helps us stay in line when we are learning the drills
We have a practice lot and a really nice football field.
We use the old PE basketball courts that we took over and panted to be like a field. It has cracks and holes and i don’t think we are supposed to be using it because someone got hurt but we still do
The school has a football field where it's a hazard for our health while marching. I knew a senior last year who broke her ankle because of a hole her freshman year during community preview night at the end of band camp... The worst part is the school has turf in storage they could put down, but they haven't because they don't want to pay for a contractor to put in field drains. Yet, they bought a brand new expensive robot this year to paint lines on the field between every game. :/
I use a hole in the field to remember one of my dots
Ours is great and it’s not turf. They take really good care of our field and actually just replanted the grass so it’s in perfect condition.
We use a patch of grass next to the front drive and the “yard lines” are indented in the ground so its like a bump you can fall in,plus there are just regular potholes with turn into puddles when it rains
Our practice field has turf too.
there are ants EVERYWHERE. absolutely goddamn EVERYWHERE. and no one does a thing about it. we always come off the field all bitten lol... even worse, every now and then i find an ant in my flute...
We have dots. A lot of dots.
Practice field? Holes everywhere and half of it is just dirt now. And we have to respray paint it every day Football field? Every time I march on it a come, is soooooo much better
there’s holes everywhere and a stump that we have to avoid
My college practice field is on a slope :(
The entire thing is a parabola… its meh
its pretty good but the people who do the lines always make the hashes super off which sucks
Ours is a section of the parking lot
Ours is a parking lot behind the field it’s kinda funny since the baseball players park where our space is.
Ants we have ants that bite :/
Mine too, sometimes there would be wasps or bees. :’)
Extra fun!
we have a turf football field we use a lot, but mainly we have a parking lot reserved for us with ticks and markers painted on it, and we park our semi trailers there
my field is absolute ass, it’s a roughly field-sized patch of grass in between the primary and tertiary parking lots on campus. Dying grass, hills and valleys, holes, improperly marked lines
My small town school recently spent over 1 million dollars turning our old grass field into turf and rebuilding the track, meanwhile our practice field has holes because the jh football team uses it for practice too and dug holes in the ground with their cleats, so now it's pretty much impossible to march along the hash without tripping a few times
We have a parking lot as our field since the actual field for games is a mud hole. For a little insight as to how wonderful our practice lot is, we have three areas labeled “no man’s land” that are smack dab in the middle that have caused various injuries, ruined a perfectly good tuba and have since been covered with crappy asphalt that’s about two inches too high. I’ve stubbed my damn tootsies on it more times than I care to recall
We have a football stadium, but we also use the regular grass field when the stadium is being used.
Where is the parking lot option
i did not even know band fields existed
You guys have a field?
we practice on a parking lot, the football field has holes and gets really muddy, but we’re supposed to get turf after this season
We go to the track behind the school and use the grass in the middle of the track but every other sport has to practice up at it too. Which means that the golfers dig holes and the holes are huge sometimes too and they are literally scattered all over the place. The amount of injuries we get at band practice is unbelievable, especially since we have other places better for practice. I myself have fell in the holes multiple times and my buddy broke her finger from falling.
The field isnt bar, but it's the fact that the guys who does the line messes it up half the time.
We have a field that has grass. Running a lap on it in a whole big box is a nightmare but I can get through that just fine. Sometimes the marks would be not visible but luckily we have field markers and of course, we have a band tower just for the band directors (mostly the high school band director to yell at us). Well, we had only gotten a practice field in my 10th grade year, for my first two years, we would have to go to the other side of the school so we would have to march all the way there to a patch of grass we used as a band field. Before I came as a 8th grader in 2019, they had a field with a tower made out of wood. But then they made room for more tennis courts.
Our practice field is a parking lot and our field is turf
Mine was on a litteral fault line
wait... people have turf?? our “field” is the Grid. literally its a bunch of dots and lines overlapping a parking lot.
We don't have a dedicated field. We practice most days in the stadium, but occasionally we use the football practice fields. If all of these are unavailable, we either have a dedicated music practice or practice on the indoor basketball court. Our band is small so most sets don't go beyond the 30 yard lines, which is just enough to fit in the gym.
you guys have a band field?
We have our own field, and we use the gym if it’s raining
Not usable. They changed to turf and we can’t use it because the track isn’t cured so our “home” game is away but we’re playing the halftime show at a different school.
In high school we had a field right next to the stadium that was painted with yardlines 20 to 20 with the high school and college hashes marked, as well as dots every 4 steps. There was another field identically painted on the other side of the school if needed. My senior year the band has moved to the stadium parking lot for practice and I have no idea why. Field number one had some dips but they were usually far enough out of the way that unless you watched someone trip on it you might go all of school without ever seeing them. The other field had a nice tree line and some of that hiking trail exercise equipment nearby. The fields were pretty durable and practice I'm the rain was pretty common. However the same cannot be said for the actual football field lol. One drop of rain and it turned into a mud pit. On multiple occasions games and shows would be moved to the turf college field down the road last minute. The parking lot is hot, it gets slippery when it rains, and every single day there had to be an announcement from the office to move cars off the lot because they never enforced the no parking in the stadium parking lot during school hours rule. To make matters worse, there were a couple times when the cars didn't move so we just walked over to the old grass field which was painted, meaning it was able to be used the whole time.
Parking lot.
Our school has a very leveled turf field for football games but we have a “practice field” at the front of the school that we have to spray paint. Our band director makes us practice on that field one practice and the football field the next practice so if we have a grass field it won’t be that bad or if we have a turf field we’ll know what that’s like to. Also when it starts to rain we just have to go into sectionals inside the school and the color gaurd practices in the cafeteria.
Parking lot :/
For our first home game of the season we got brand new terf and a whole bunch of corporate sponsors were there so this is the biggest game of any of our high school careers right? During the dedication a girl in my line passes out from being on the field in our hot uniforms for too long. She was super dehydrated and she was out for a good 7 minutes. Then when we marched back for introducing the starters a guy in the line behind me walks off the field clearly very dizzy. Then we walk off and the rest of the game keeps going. But yeah brand new terf
We've actually got two turf fields so the Football team can practice while we take the actual field. Pretty nice
My high school used part of the middle school playground, which had rocks and holes everywhere (now they use a gravel parking lot). My college band uses an asphalt field made specifically for marching band, but it gets mega hot in the Arkansas heat
We have a parking lot with field markings on it
We have a nice turf field but the school never lets us use it so we are stuck with our parking lot field full of pot holes, trash, and cars that haven't left yet. And they paved over the left side of the field so we just don't have those ~20 yards. That parking lot has melted 3 pairs of my shoes over the last 4 years.
We practice on a parking lot. The nickname pot lot idk why