End of Marching Season

Oh my god I'm so sad :(

A really, really, REALLY amazing time is over.
Yesterday, we had our last normal practise. Well, actually it wasn't that normal since it was on a Friday and it was only 2 hours long but it was like, the last practise after which we went home and not to a competition.
Before the practise, there was a march off on the field. Every band member who wants to participate does some basic marching on the field, and the drum majors pick out those who make mistakes until one winner is left. I watched the beginning of it with some of the other pit people but didn't participate (I don't even know the commands). It looked like fun.
The practise was cold again but I really enjoyed it. Even in these few weeks that I've been in the band, even I have noticed how much all of us improved. How the show improved. It's amazing.
Today was the big day - Michigan State Finals!
Our practise at school started at 8am when it was still freeeeezing outside but that was alright. It was such a cool rehearsal. Everyone was focused but we all had fun at the same time, and everyone was hyper and pumped and excited about State Finals! Mr Hilton didn't yell at us once, he even said "Beautiful! Just beautiful!" a couple of times... he's so proud of us.
Around 10 or 10.30 or something, we started loading. When that was done, we ate lunch and got dressed and then, we went on the buses to leave the school for our one last competition this season.
The ride was short and we soon arrived in downtown Detroit.
Since there's not really a place to warm-up directly at the Ford Field stadium, we went to a parking lot a couple blocks away and kind of occupied it for our warm-ups within the sections. I was surprisingly calm but then again I was of course excited... it's hard to describe. I think what I want to say is that I wasn't really as nervous as I thought I'd be.
When the time had finally come, we had to move all our pit stuff to the stadium, across some busy streets... it went well though. Then, the difficult part came - the ramp! To get down to the field, we had to go down a looong car ramp that led into the stadium and at some points, it was really steep! Fortunately, there were many band moms and dads to help us with the pit equipment. The very last minutes before our performance were so awesome... full of tension and excitement. We did our last pit circle for this season - my last pit circle overall - that we always did before performances... we stood in a circle, arms around each other, put our left feet into the circle and somebody, usually Sarah, our section leader, or Laura or James, our instructors, would say something and then we would lower our hands over the nickle in the circle's middle (sometimes a real nickle, if noone had one, it was an imaginay nickle) and said "Nickle!".
Then we had to go out of the field. The 4 minutes we have to set up are always incredibly exciting - you have to set up everything so fast and pray to God that nothing is set up or connected wrong so that it causes trouble during the show. We made it though. Because we're awesome :)
I've never enjoyed playing the show so much. The audience was a lot larger than usual, the stadium was awesome and the energy of the music and the whole show just carries you. And the whole time, you have this thought in the back of your head - I'm playing in the State Finals, in one of Michigan's elite bands (that's what a judge called us last week)... I can be frickin' proud!!
After our performance, we had photos taken in the stands... professional photos of the whole band. Outside the stadium we had section pictures taken... the pit together with the battery. I'm definitely going to order those on the internet as soon as they are available.
We stayed for the awards, of course. We got 4th place and a really really good score. I'm so happy.
Back at the school, we unloaded (for the last time! :'( even that makes me sad...) after we had putten our uniforms back on the hangers... I'll miss this uniform. It made me really proud to wear it. Most people stayed a little after because we had a little "After-Finals-Party", meaning the band parents had made us an awesome food buffet once again and somebody had set up karaoke and guitar hero. Nobody stayed long but it was nice.
I found some more videos of our show on youtube... and I'm actually in them! You can see that the marching part and the pit (the standing people playing the standing instruments) are divided by a black wall. All the way to the right, in front of the wall, you might be able to recognize something like a syntheziser cart (just that black cart thing, looks like a table kind of) with 3 or 4 people standing behind it. I'm on the very left of those 3 or 4 people (the number depends on the show because we moved Tre at some point... but however, I'm always on the left of the synth cart, as seen from the audience's point of view). So here the videos are:

That was one of the best times of my life!!