No. 1: Community responds to agitators’ return with show of support
The Mac community responded to hate speech from outside agitators this morning with a counter message of love and support.
At roughly 8:15 this morning, a group of agitators from the Official Street Preachers gathered in front of the campus, yelling and holding signs with hateful messaging that disparaged Jewish students, Muslim students, LGBTQ+ students, abortion advocates and more.
The group isn’t new to Mac. On Aug, 22, 2023, they threw the Mac community off by showing up just before school was dismissed with no prior warning. Today though, was a different story as the group told police at Austin High on Monday that the group was coming to McCallum on Tuesday and after showing up on the Election Day holiday to find no students on campus, the group made plans to come back today.
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No. 2: Band places third overall at USBands regional competition, earns Best Overall Music
AND BLAZES INTO THIRD PLACE: Tonight at the @usbandsofficial regional competition @macbandofficial placed third overall and won best overall music. The day started out with 22 bands, with only 12 qualifying for finals. This placement was an improvement from their preliminary award, going from fourth overall to now third overall. According to senior drum major Max Davis, the awards reflected their strong finals performance.
“I’m really happy with how the run went,” he said. “Everyone performed really well. I’m really happy with our placing. We moved up a spot form prelims, we started in fourth now we’re in third, and we got the best overall music. That’s great.”
With two back to back weeks of competitions, the band has about three weeks until their next one, time that Davis said will help them prepare for tougher competition and more crucial placements.
“We have a lot of time to finish putting the show on the field and then practice getting it all really good before we perform in region in October,” he said. “We need to improve on making sure everything stays in time and just in general, leg shape.”
With a few specific things Davis has seen that need more work, he has also noticed the vast progress over the past few weeks.
“It’s definitely been getting better,” he said “It has been improving. I definitely do think it’s been progressing very well. Even compared to last week, it was much better.”
No. 3: Band make first finals appearance of season at USBands regional competition
KNIGHTS AWAIT FINALS RESULTS: Tonight the band performed their show ‘Fury Road’ for the US Bands regional competition finals. Tonight’s performance marks their first finals appearance of the season and now decides what awards and place they will receive at this competition. Senior tenor drum player, Parker Chauvin, said that they improved from today’s preliminary performance.
“I think it was better than prelims. It was a lot stronger,” he said. “A lot of our impacts came through a lot stronger. I’m looking forward to getting more reps because we still have a lot of time in the season, and we’re yet to go to region and area.”
As a whole, Chauvin said he is happy with how the season has been going so far.
“This show is definitely stronger than some of the other years we’ve had and has been moving along way better than last year,” he said.
After finishing their first finals performance of the season, Senior woodwind captain Sadie Swinney said she was proud of the band’s run tonight.
“It went really, really well,” she said. “Everybody I’ve talked to said they had a really good individual run , and I believe I did too. From what I’ve seen everybody’s pretty happy about it.”
Earlier in the day the band placed first in their division with best overall music effect and visual effect. For Swinney, this acknowledgment means a lot for both her and the band.
“It was awesome,” she said. “It was basically our first material success of the season, so it’s good to know we’re at the place where we want to be, and getting first in our region is always fun.”
No. 4: Mac marching band delivers 'good run' in prelims of USBands regional competition
HOPING TO FIND THEIR WAY TO FINALS: The @macbandofficial performed in the prelims today during the @usbandsofficial competition at Bob Shelton Stadium in Kyle at 1 p.m. Last year, the band placed second in the final competition and, for now, they are awaiting the results to see if they qualify for the finals. Junior front ensemble member, Roman Barrett, kicked off the show playing the bass drum. He felt overall the band had a good run, but noted a mistake he made at the beginning where he played the wrong music. Being one of the first sounds the crowd hears from Mac, he had to get back into the rhythm for the rest of the show ahead.
¨It’s pretty cool, but it puts a lot of weight on my shoulders,¨ he said. ¨I was thinking I need to wipe this out of my head and forget this happened so that I could go on throughout the show with a positive attitude.¨
The US Bands Competition is the Mac Band’s second competition of the season performing the show ‘Fury Road’ that Barrett said he really enjoys.
¨This year’s show is very ferocious and exciting and loud,¨ he said. ¨I really like it and I think it’s a pretty fun show to play.¨
Freshman clarinet player Susan Welsh is a part of a trio of clarinet players that is featured midway through the show. According to Welsh, being a part of a notable part of the show is an exciting opportunity to have during her first year in high school.
¨I’m really proud,¨ she said. ¨It’s an honor to be able to do something higher up.¨
As for the preliminary performance, Welsh was happy with how the band did.
¨It was a little scary but I think we did really well,¨ she said. ¨It was a really fun Brun, and I’m proud of us. I hope we make it to finals.¨
No. 5: Band warms up for prelims at USBands regional competition at Shelton Stadium in Kyle
FOCUSED ON FURY: The band is warming up for their @usbandsofficial competition prelim performance at Bob Shelton Stadium in Kyle. Their first performance of the day is set to take place at 1 p.m. and will be the determining factor for whether or not they make it to the finals later tonight. Senior clarinet player, Isa Lopez Reed, said that she’s hoping this season’s show will get them advanced to finals.
“I think it’s a good show,” she said. “It’s a good environment. We’re all working together and trying hard. I think all we need to do is focus a bit more because sometimes we do lack that.”
Looking forward to the rest of the day, Lopez Reed is hoping the band will finish first or second in finals tonight, but to do so she said they need to prioritize some aspects of the performance that she said sometimes they may fall short in.
“Counting loud, being able to actually focus, focusing on our technique, leg shape, and having a good performance,” she said.”
According to sophomore bass drum player, Karlo Bloom, today’s competition is looking good for the Knights.
“I’m looking forward to getting first place,” he said. “I think we’ve gotten better, and we’re getting to our dots on time.”
This being Bloom’s second year with the band, he said he enjoys this season’s show, ‘Fury Road,’ which has finalized eight of the 40 or so sets of movement four for today’s performance.
“I think this year’s is better,” he said. “Especially movement four.”
No. 6: Austin Fire Department conducts annual 1,368-foot stair climb, honor 9/11 first responders
Station 4 firefighter Natasha Hunt participated in the Austin Fire Department’s 9/11 memorial stair climb for the first time today. As one of many people partaking in the tradition, Hunt climbed roughly 1,368 feet of stairs, the height of the World Trade Center in 2001. For over an hour, participants made their way up and down the Pleasant Valley Tower nine times. Numerous firefighters, members of the military, veterans, civilians and people of all ages, set out to finish the climb.
To read Lillian Gray’s story of the annual climb, the longest-running memorial of its kind, please click the first link in our bio or visit macshieldonline.com.
No. 7: Gov. Moore stresses value of education in speech to students at 2024 Texas Tribune Festival
Early on the morning of Friday Sept 6, students at the @texas_tribune Festival had the chance to hear Maryland Gov. Wes Moore speak at a student breakfast held in the Omni Hotel. As students gathered around Moore, they heard him speak about a variety of different issues. For one, Moore touched on education and the importance of understanding American history as a whole and not trying to cover any of it up.
“Loving your country does not mean lying about it,” he said. “We still stand here today in this moment with an opportunity to continue to build a more perfect union. That is the greatest love story of America that I could ever understand.”
Moore took a moment to tell his experience during the events on March 26, 2024 when a container ship hit the Francis Scott Key Bridge on the Patapsco River in Maryland, causing it to collapse, killing six construction workers.
“I learned at 2:02 in the morning that we were hours away from realizing that that bridge that nearly 40,000 people took to get to work every day, was gone,” he said. “We were hours away from thousands of workers realizing that the port of Baltimore that they relied on, that represents 13% of our state’s economy, was shut down.”
With a difficult and tragic situation at hand, Moore explained the goals he hoped to accomplish following the incident and how he achieved them.
“We were gonna make sure that we could support the workers who woke up that morning and now realized they didn’t have a job,” he said. “We were gonna make sure that we got the port of Baltimore reopened as soon as possible. And we were gonna make sure we rebuilt the Francis Scott Key Bridge. People said it would take 11 months to reopen the port of Baltimore and it took 11 weeks.“
No. 8: Band overcomes weather delay to preview 2024 competition show for parents, community
After an almost hour-long delay due to a threat of lightning, the band began another year of Bandapalooza. Up on the conductors’ podium, Mr. Junkin, the band’s associate director, spoke to the band from up above, surrounded by the evening’s sunset.
“Obviously we got a little delayed and so the sun set a little bit earlier than we would have liked, but it’s just a chance for the parents to come out and to see how we go about our rehearsal cause a lot of times they don’t get to see how everything gets done,” he said. “They see the performances on the field but not necessarily how they’re created.”
Bandapalooza marks the countdown to Taco Shack, the first and biggest football game of the season, just a little under a week away. The band’s preview performed tonight will be put on the big stage at House Park next Thursday.
Photo and caption by Lillian Gray.
No. 9: Attending a welcoming Link Crew-led assembly, freshmen start high school careers
As the freshmen stepped into their first day of high school, they filed into the MAC for an assembly, where they were greeted by the band, cheerleaders and Link Crew, who created a “tunnel” welcoming freshmen into the auditorium. Among those coming through the tunnel was freshman Juan Galvan.
“Today I’m looking forward to meeting my teachers, getting to know my classes and meeting new people,” he said.
Principal Baxa led the assembly, which consisted of welcoming students to McCallum and explaining the school’s policies and expectations. He also stressed that these expectations will come with more freedom along with more responsibility, a change that freshmen, like Galvan, must learn to handle.
“I’ve heard that it’s a lot to carry because there are a lot of classes and extracurriculars so I’ll have to balance all of that,” he said.
Luckily, the first day wasn’t too much of a stressor for Galvan, in part because he has already been introduced to the high school experience through his participation in marching band.
“I marched last year as an eighth-grader, so I already got to know some people in the band,” he said. “It’s helped me get ready for today a lot.”
We are working on our first Tuesday Top 10, which will present more photos and perspectives on today’s first day of school.
Photo and caption by Lillian Gray.
No. 10: Biden delivers LBJ Library speech to mark the 60th anniversary of 1964 Civil Rights Act
President Joe Biden spoke at the LBJ Library today to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Biden’s keynote speech was preceded by musical performances by five-time Grammy-nominated musician Ruthie Foster and the Huston-Tillotson University choir, as well as speakers like Ambassador Andrew Young, who introduced Biden, and actor Bryan Cranston, who reenacted President Johnson’s 1964 speech to the nation marking the passage of the Civil Rights Act and his signing it into law.
Throughout the speech, Biden highlighted Johnson’s numerous contributions to the country and the lasting and important impact those pieces of legislation have had on American society.
“Together with the Voting Rights Act and the Fair Housing Act, these three landmark laws he signed are remarkable in their scale and their scope,” Biden said. “Taken together these three Acts have made this nation fundamentally more fair, fundamentally more just and most importantly, fundamentally more consistent with our founding principles. And we’re a better nation because of them. We must be clear: their work, our work, is not done. It’s not done. We do not celebrate these laws as part of our past, but as critical components of our future.”
Despite much of his speech’s goal to look back on important historical decisions, Biden took the chance to speak on the opportunity lawmakers and Americans have today to create a more democratic and balanced government. Due to recent events, like the July 1 Supreme Court ruling on Presidential immunity, Biden created a sense of urgency surrounding the topic of reforms needed to ensure a more ethical Supreme Court: term limits and mandatory ethics rules.