(Video courtesy of Mardi Khin)
On the evening of October 10, Hercules fought a historic Homecoming football game against Pinole Valley High School. In addition to its football team, Pinole brought its cheerleaders and marching band. During the game, both the Hercules and the Pinole marching bands played, pumping up the crowd. Eventually, the crowd started to root for the bands, nearly forgetting the football game.
During the third quarter of the game, Hercules drum majors Chelsea Uriza (12) and Brandon Fong (12) challenged Pinole’s drumline, which accepted. Once the game finished, the two bands met on the track, and the Titan-Spartan rivalry stole the audience’s attention--even those who were leaving stayed to witness this historic event. Both drumlines started the battle by chanting, pumping themselves up to dominate the opponent. Both groups played their hearts out, and Pinole even brought its tuba players to play alongside the drums. In a more taunting gesture, Pinole drummers went up to Hercules and played on its drums. That gesture “tick[ed] every drummer [in my drumline] off; we were about to play on theirs in return,” Brandon Fong said. However, when Hercules was about to play their cadence, the Hercules administration terminated the battle because it was late in the evening (10 PM). The battle went on for nine rounds, when officially it should have only gone on for two or three.
So who won? “I felt like they won,” Fong said, “because they had the band members participate and they had longer cadences.” However, Fong later added “it was a ‘Drumline Battle,’ not a ‘Band Battle.’” Usually the decision is based on the audiences’ cheer or which team can outplay the other, but since having a Hercules audience decide the winner would be biased, the winner should be the drumline that outplays the other. However, the battle was terminated by the administration and no winner was determined. In the end, both groups acknowledged each other’s dedicated performance.
At the end of the evening, the audience craved more, but decided to go home, leaving the football field bare. “I am very proud of Drumline,” Fong said. “I gave them the experience and now they can grow upon it after I graduate this year. I’m very sure I’m going to leave a good Drumline, a loving family.”