Dear M100 Family,

We have made it through the first week of school! We have two weeks until our first football game performance, so let’s improve our show the best that we can!

Here is your weekend update!

UPCOMING REHEARSALS AND EVENTS

https://www.beltonmarching100.com/calendar

You can also click HERE to view a printable document of all of our major events for the entire 1st semester!

• Monday, August 18 – M100 Rehearsal, 5:00pm-8:00pm
• Tuesday, August 19 – M100 Rehearsal, 5:00pm-8:00pm
• Thursday, August 21 – M100 Rehearsal, 7:00am-8:15am
• Friday, August 22 – M100 Rehearsal, 7:00am-8:15am
• Saturday, August 23 – Prop Assembly Workday, 10:00am-3:00pm
• Monday, August 25 – M100 Rehearsal, 5:00pm-8:00pm
• Tuesday, August 26 – M100 Rehearsal, 5:00pm-8:00pm
• Thursday, August 28 – M100 Rehearsal, 7:00am-8:15am
• Friday, August 29 – M100 Rehearsal, 7:00am-8:15am
• Friday, August 29 – AWAY Football Game @ Hendrickson HS

INFORMATION AND UPDATES

ELIGIBILITY MATTERS – PASS YOUR CLASSES!

In order to participate in extracurricular performances and events outside of the school day, students will need to be academically eligible when we do our eligibility checks. Although Belton ISD operates on a 9-week grading period, we will have a grade check at the 6-week mark in order to operate on a fair playing field to other districts with 6-week grading periods. Our first eligibility check will be on Friday, September 19 at 4:25pm. Any student with a grade below a 70 in an on level class at this time will be considered academically ineligible, beginning on Friday, September 26 at 4:25pm. These students will still be required to attend all rehearsals, but will not be allowed to attend the following events.

• Friday, September 26 – AWAY Football Game @ Hendrickson HS
• Saturday, October 4 – Vista Ridge Marching Festival
• Saturday, October 11 – USBands Burleson Marching Contest

The 2nd eligibility check will be on Wednesday, October 8 at 4:25pm. Since this is the official end of our grading period, students that were eligible at the first grade check can still lose their eligibility. M100 students are encouraged to keep all grades above a 70 at all times in order to prevent the risk of failing.

SENIOR BIO NEEDED FOR FOOTBALL PROGRAM

Seniors, if you have not filled out this bio yet, please do so ASAP!

Link: https://forms.gle/NPg3dHuaVNuwLj3w5

FOUNDATIONS FOR SUPERIOR PERFORMANCE BOOK NEEDED FOR BAND CLASS

FOR M100 WIND PLAYERS – During marching season, we will be working on band fundamentals out of the “Foundations for Superior Performance” book, also known as the “blue book”. We will be doing a book check in class on Monday, August 18, so please acquire your book by then. You can find this book at Music and Arts, and you can also acquire it from Amazon. Make sure you buy the version for your instrument

Here is a link to the Clarinet version of the blue book. Again, you MUST search for the appropriate instrument or you will have the wrong book.

AMAZON CLARINET BLUE BOOK EXAMPLE

WEEK OF 8/18 REHEARSAL SCHEDULE

Please view the upcoming M100 rehearsal schedule for the week of Monday, August 18.

For morning rehearsals, the band hall will open at 6:30am.

MONDAY, AUGUST 18

• M100 Evening Rehearsal, 5:00pm-8:00pm (Rehearsal begins inside)

TUESDAY, AUGUST 19

• M100 Evening Rehearsal, 5:00pm-8:00pm (Rehearsal begins inside)

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 20

• NO REHEARSAL

THURSDAY, AUGUST 21

• M100 Morning Rehearsal, 7:00am-8:15am (Rehearsal begins at the practice Field)

FRIDAY, AUGUST 22

• M100 Morning Rehearsal, 7:00am-8:15am (Rehearsal begins at the practice Field)

WEEK OF 8/18 BAND CLASS SCHEDULE

We will start including plans for the week in the weekend update.

MONDAY, AUGUST 18

• Drug Test Consent Presentation
• Complete Part 2 Set List
• WW/Brass Split
  • Warm Up
  • Brass – Double Tonguing
  • WW – Show feature moments

TUESDAY, AUGUST 19

• Choreo Day
• Part 3 Music

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 20

• WW/Brass Split
  • Warm Up
  • Part 1 Music Review
  • Part 2 Music Review
  • Part 3 Music

THURSDAY, AUGUST 21

• Stand Tunes Rehearsal
  • Applause – Belle Tune
  • Land of 1000 Dances

FRIDAY, AUGUST 22

• Region Practice Day (Wind Ensemble/Wind Symphony)
  • Concert instruments will be needed during class
• Blue Book Scales and Technique (Symphonic Band)
  • Concert instruments will be needed during class

DRUG TEST CONSENT PRESENTATION

All BISD students in extracurricular activities are required to participate in the Drug Test Compliance Training, which will be done during class on Monday of this week. Students will be bringing home a form that will need to be completed and signed by next Wednesday, August 27.

8/23 PROP ASSEMBLY WORKDAY

We will be holding a prop assembly workday at the band hall on Saturday, August 23 from 10:00am-3:00pm. This will mainly be dedicated to assembling our front and back panels that we will be using during the marching show! All students and parents are invited to help put these props together. The more people show up, the easier the process will be, so please consider helping out!

8/29 AWAY FOOTBALL GAME @ HENDRICKSON HS

Our first football game of the season will be an away game against Hendrickson HS at “The Pfield” in Pflugerville, TX. Please click HERE to view the itinerary for the game.

2025 MARCHING SHOW MUSIC RECORDINGS – MUSIC UPDATED!

Below is a link to all 4 movements of this year’s marching production, “Between the Storms”.

This has been updated with all of the official music, including percussion!

Link: 2025 M100 MIDI FILES – BETWEEN THE STORMS

REHEARSAL SCHEDULE ADJUSTMENT EXPLANATION

Some of you may have noticed that the rehearsal schedule has changed quite a bit over the years, and even a few times this year with the ending times of our evening rehearsals. I acknowledge that it may feel like the rehearsal schedule and times are constantly changing, which is understandable. For those of you that are interested to know why, I have included a very lengthy and completely skippable explanation. If you are not interested in this at all, please just read the short version below.

SHORT VERSION (PLEASE READ THIS): All evening rehearsals will be from 5:00pm-8:00pm, with 15 minutes factored in for travel time for inside to outside due to heat concerns. If we are able to start rehearsal outside at 5pm, then rehearsal will end at 7:45pm. This will make it so that every evening rehearsal occurs within a consistent time frame, instead of having one rehearsal longer than the other.

LONG VERSION (SKIP THIS IF YOU DON’T CARE): Belton ISD adheres to the WBGT (Wet Bulb Globe Temperature) guidelines introduced by UIL, which, in its simplest terms, is a metric for how effectively the body can cool itself off from sweating. When this number is too high, it becomes dangerous to be outside without frequent monitoring and breaks.

Before these guidelines were introduced, the M100 used to rehearse exclusively after school. We would go from 5pm-7:30pm for the first rehearsal of the week , 5pm-8pm for the second rehearsal, and 5pm-7:30pm for the final rehearsal, in order to maximize our utilization of the 8 hour rule. (You only get 8 hours a week after September 1st to participate in any given UIL activity.) In 2023, we ended up losing about 15 hours of rehearsal time due to the WBGT being too high for us to be outside for 2.5-3 hours. Since mornings are consistently below the WBGT threshold, in 2024, we adopted a schedule where we rehearsed four days a week in the mornings from 7:00am-8:15am, and once a week after school from 5:00pm-8:15pm, with 15 minutes of transition time being taken into account. This allowed us to maximize our rehearsal time outside, and was a considerable factor to our increase in success as a marching band from 2023 to 2024.

This year, there were a number of changes with various athletics’ practice schedules and class periods that required us to make an adjustment to our rehearsal schedule, because it is my intention to make the M100 as accessible to as many students as possible, including those involved with multiple athletic groups. Due to the amount of athletic teams practicing in the mornings, many students in the M100 would end up missing a significant amount of rehearsal time with us, so we decided to adjust our schedule so that we would have two morning rehearsals and two evening rehearsals, allowing students with morning athletic conflicts to make the majority of our rehearsal time after school, while also allowing our after school athletic conflicts to report to band as soon as they are done with their sport.

When we decided to move to this new schedule, I used the formula for the first two rehearsals of the week from the past, which was 5pm-7:30pm, then 5pm-8pm. Add 15 minutes of transition time from the main building to the practice field (which does not count toward the 8 hour rule) to each of these rehearsals and you get 5pm-7:45pm and 5pm-8:15pm. Recently, I looked over the schedule for the year and realized that this is completely unnecessary. The different ending times for each day makes it so everyone has to keep track of which day of the week it is, and whether or not this is an “early late rehearsal day” or a “later late rehearsal day. While it may feel to many of you like our rehearsal schedule changes every year, well, you’re not wrong because it has. I did want to offer some insight as to why, and I also want to try and keep things as simple and consistent as possible, given all the variables, so I hope you enjoyed my very long winding way of saying I realized we can just make all of our evening rehearsals 5pm-8pm and end them 15 minutes early if we don’t have to start inside because I did some math and realized it didn’t have to be so confusing.

If you made it this far, thank you for reading all the way to the end! Here is a reward for your diligence.