Lighthouse Brigade Crowned 2017 MACBDA Champion
The Lighthouse Brigade of Racine Marching Band recently completed their competitive season at the Mid-America Competing Band Director’s Association (MACBDA) Championships on Saturday, July 15 at Perkins Stadium at the University of Wisconsin – Whitewater. The Brigade, with a season high score of 91.4, took first place and the title of 2017 MACBDA Champion with their show entitled, “Puppet Master”. In addition, the Brigade won the caption trophies for music execution; visual execution; music general effect; visual general effect and percussion.
Rex Rukavina, the Brigade director since 2000, is quick to point out that this championship victory is a true team effort.
“This is our 38th year of competition and we continue to receive incredible support from the Racine Unified School District. We take the fact that we represent our school district and the city of Racine very seriously as we tour and perform during the season. We also have extremely dedicated parents who make up the Racine Band Boosters and they work hard all year long to keep our organization strong and moving in the right direction,” Rukavina said. “Our world-class staff brings roughly 175+ combined years of marching, designing and teaching experience to our members. And the marching members themselves go through a week long band camp of 12 hours days to learn the field show and continue for the rest of the summer with 9-9 rehearsals and competitions in Southeastern Wisconsin and the National Cherry Festival in Traverse City, MI.”
The Brigade was in second place by relatively small margins for much of the season.
“The marching members and instructional staff never gave up and continued to work extremely hard every day to make our production better,” Rukavina added. “The night before finals, at our home show at Horlick Field, we took high music and high visual execution as well as high percussion and took first place by only .01 of a point. We had a terrific rehearsal the next day and everything peaked at just the right time at finals!”
Congratulations, Lighthouse Brigade!
