The Tomball Marching band finished 3rd Wednesday night at UIL Area competition, qualifying them for the state UIL marching contest. The members put in a lot of work to get where they are, and are all proud of their hard work.

“I didn’t even know we could get to it at this point. I grew up in this program basically, as a freshman, and just realizing that we made it this far and realizing we are going to continue. It’s amazing,” Chase Combs said.

The band students have missed a lot of school in order to practice for the competition, and will likely be making it up over the weekend. They will also be missing Monday and Tuesday for the state competition.

The band will depart Monday for San Antonio, and will performing the next morning.

“The bands we will be going up against will be the very best in the entire country, because Texas tends to have the best marching bands,” said percussion leader Mitchell Variety. “It’s going to be some very tough competition.”

Despite the challenge ahead of them, the band is still happy with how far they have come. It will be the first time that the band will go to state for quite a few years.

“I was shocked, and happy. Everyone was crying, because we put so much work in, we just couldn’t take it at that point. We were so happy,” Combs said.