Youth Band Success at Whit Friday

02 Jun 2018

On Friday 25th May the Enderby Youth Band made the trip to take part in what has been called the greatest free show on earth, the Whit Friday Marches, which takes place around 22 villages in Saddleworth and Tameside areas or Manchester.

The coach left the bandroom in Huncote at 1:30pm, with the our anticipated arrival time in Tameside being 4:30pm, however traffic was not in our favour and we didn’t arrive at our first venue until around 6:15pm. Despite this the band were in high spirits and kept the supporters entertained with their singing.

As you can imagine each of the villages gets very busy with all the bands travelling around the area trying to compete at a minimum of 6 contests to ensure that they qualify for entry into the overall championship prize for the region. Kathryn, a member of the senior band, who was travelling with us as a supporter, and has taken part in the event with other band previously, took on the task of ringing round each venue to find out how many bands were waiting, this ensured that the band didn’t have to wait too long and also when we arrived at each venue getting the band booked in with each village contest control. This task was made easier thanks to the planning undertaken by Trevor (the conductor) and Sion Owen (Treasurer) who had already put together a rough idea of the villages the band would like to visit.

In total the band managed to visit and compete at 7 venues in total (6 on Tameside and 1 Saddleworth), with our final performance taking place at around 11:45pm.

As we travelled back to the bandroom at Huncote the results of our efforts started to filter through and by the time we arrived back at around 3am the band knew that they had a 1st and 2nd prize under their belts. We had to wait until the around mid morning on Saturday 26th May to find out the full result, with the only result outstanding being the Tameside regional champion, which wouldn’t be confirmed until after the bank holiday weekend. Unfortunately the band did not win either of the prizes on offer in the Tameside regional Championship. The full results were (in the order the venues we attended):

Dukinfield Thames Valley: 1st Place

Dukinfield Albion: 1st Place

Stalybridge Labour Club: 1st Place

Stalybridge Celtic: 1st Place

Carrbrook: 2nd Place

Heyrod: 3rd Place

Scouthead & Austerlands: Not in prizes

The band were overjoyed with the result and this proved that their hardwork had paid off. Special thanks also go to the adults who played with the band to help bolster the numbers and also the supporters who were cheering them on from the sidelines.