April Camp Report

Everyone was eagerly awaiting the April camp as it was to be the first time the entire corps was together since the December camp. Many of the members had been very busy through the winter months as participants in winter guard and percussion. In addition, this was the camp that we were to start teaching drill.

After Friday evening sectionals, Saturday and Sunday saw a lot of field time. We are fortunate to call Cosumnes Oaks High School home, as we have use of not only the stadium and its artificial turf field, but also use of the natural grass soccer fields.

Considerable work was done on the music book, and the full corps has almost a minute of the show on the field. The staff was very impressed with the members’ ability to perform this portion of the opener, as it was the first time putting music to drill.

Our outstanding volunteers were also kept busy during the weekend, cooking all the meals (including 2 bbq’s!), taking care of administrative forms, and fitting uniforms.

The corps was also preparing for our first public appearance of the year, at the Pacific Rim Festival to be held in Old Sacramento on Sunday May 23. Keep checking the corps web page for details: http://mandarins.org/

There were a number of new members at this camp to help round out the roster. At this time, the corps has a couple of guard spots, a couple of tuba spots and one mallet/aux. perc. spot in the pit. If you are interested, please fill out an interest form on line here: http://bit.ly/afOwul or you can contact the individual caption heads through the email links on our staff page here: http://mandarins.org/about/info.html

The corps’ next camp will be Memorial Day weekend, May 28 – 31 at Cosumnes Oaks High School. The staff and members are looking forward to another great camp as we get ready for the 2010 season!