The dispute over what the most dedicated and hardworking organization is at this school is constantly brewing and the Puma Regiment has a good case for their place on top of the mountain.

Every year kids from around the country participate in the All American Band Showcase, a half-time show for the best performers from marching band during the All American Bowl football game. This year seniors Sienna Samour and Caroline Earnhardt were chosen to participate in the once in a lifetime opportunity.

Samour says, “we practice everyday for like 5 days and we put on this huge show that normally our marching band works on for 6 months of the year, were gonna do it in 6 days. It’s the best musicians from the whole country coming together and putting on a show for the military.”

In a striking pattern, two of the eight students selected from Arizona have come from Perry-for the past three years. It’s a tedious application process and only the best of the best can participate in the all-expense paid trip to San-Antonio. How is Perry marching band different in their success compared to all the other bands in Arizona?

“I personally think it’s the consistency in our training that we have. Year after year, we spend a lot of time training our students with the skills they need and those skills are apparently desirable because they’ve liked it every time,” band director Brandon Kiesgen said.

The application process is tedious as well, which adds to the claim that marching band is an extraordinary program.

“For the audition you have to film a video of yourself marching,” Earnhardt explained, “and then a video of yourself playing and get letters of recommendation and everything like that and after that they go through all the tapes and they choose 125 students, and normally there are like 1300 that audition.”

According to those statistics, that comes out to a 9% acceptance rate. For the third consecutive year, Band has proven the quality of its students against a competitive, nation-wide rubric.