By Miranda Holloway
Executive Online Editor
Performing on brand new astro turf the Prospect Marching Knights, or PMK, continued their season by taking the Grand Champion title at the 44 annual Chicagoland Marching Band Festival held and Wheeling High School this past weekend.
Performing this year’s show, Leonardo’s Dream, PMK won in a field of 21 bands from around the Midwest. Along with snagging the Grand Champion title, the band also won awards for best percussion, auxiliary (color guard), general effect, and music in their class.
“Wheeling on the whole was pretty good. It was a pretty strong performance overall. There were a few weird moments in the show that we would like to get rid of,” band director Chris Barnum said.

This win follows their successful trip the 33 Annual Lancer Joust Marching Band Competition at Lake Park High School where the group received the highest over all score in a field of 25 bands along with taking home all three possible “best” awards.
Even with their successful season so far, PMK is not getting too comfortable with their winning ways.
After viewing the video of their performance at the Chicagoland competition the band has pointed out areas where they feel they need to improve for their next competition.
“We deffinatly had some tempo issues in areas of the opener and closer, and we need to have everyone on board with keeping the tempo moving and also having the musicality that we have practiced in there as well,” senior drum major Jessica Kreidler said.
As a result the band has spent the majority of this week trying to work out some of the issues they were having.
They do this in preparation of the Northern Illinois University Red and Black Fall Classic where the band will travel to Dekalb, where they placed first overall last year.
This competition will pose some new challenges to the band however as they will compete in a college size stadium for the first time this season.
“Wheeling, although they still have the really nice astro- turf, it still the size of a normal high school stadium like ours,” Barnum said. “NIU is a very tall, very high college stadium so performing in a big stadium like that is just a different was to perform because it is a much bigger room.”