On September 23, 2023, The Heritage band and color guard both won the award of three-time Grand Champions at the competition! The show’s name is “Aria,” an operatic solo from three movements from various operas. “Aria” is led by drum major senior Carmen Potter, junior Julia Petteys, and junior Inae Kim.  In the show, there is a duet dance from junior Anderson Sasada and senior Sophia Benavides alongside senior flute soloist Ellery Johnson and junior flugelhorn soloist Riley Case. Rehearsing this took hundreds of hours to perfect for them to get where they did.

There are three movements in the show. The first movement was the opera “Carmen,” set in southern Spain and written by Georges Bizet. The second movement was called “O Mio Babbino Caro,” from the opera “Gianni Schicchi” by Puccini in Florence, Italy. The third movement was from “Don Giovanni,” an Italian opera written by the Austrian composer, Amadeus Mozart.  Kim said, “I like the last song because it’s the finale and there is a reprise of the opener.” They competed against 15 bands, in total 51 other bands. They competed against 16 other bands. Not only was that difficult, the band that came into second place, had 350 members in their band. They competed against 23 other bands and three bands were twice the size of our band.

Alongside these movements, Benavides and Sasada who are in color guard, performed a solo each then came together in the middle and performed a duet. This moment helped create the storyline and the props of fans and pictures. After all this hard work and dedication, it meant a lot to everyone to be awarded Grand Champions at the very first competition.  The first competition was at Bradley Central, and they won the title of Grand Champions. This pushed our band and color guard to not only win a two-time Grand Champions at Albertville High School in Albertville, Alabama, but to become a three-time Grand Champions at Rockmart High School in Rockmart, Georgia. This was a huge moment because, at the third competition, the Heritage band had never beat the second-place winner and had never won first place at Albertville. The students worked super hard for this moment and definitely earned it, too. In the end, The Legion of Generals Band came together and performed better than we can even imagine.