I live in Anaheim, California, if none of you knew, and I attend Anaheim High. This past marching season, our football team went up against the Katella Knights. Keep this in mind: Katella is our sister school. We're supposed to be chill right? Well after our pink out game (breast cancer awareness game), people started to think otherwise. Actually, I shouldn't say that... Anaheim vs Katella football games always have some type of problem, but this seems to be the worst so far.
Our football team was getting wrecked, which is the usual. It was finally halftime (the reason everyone goes to our games), and the band had just left the bleachers to go behind the away side to set up our competition lines. As we stand behind Katella's bleachers, we see a mob of katella's students get up and walk around the field (towards the Home bleachers). Although it was suspicious, we all assumed that they were just leaving the game. TURNS OUT, they were planning something called the "Sneak In." This plan was basically for them to walk over to our ASB section and parents, and harass. Anyway, the band is already on the sideline, about to march into our first set of the show, and we see red smoke in the air (katella's school color). People are fanning their surroundings like crazy, and cheerleaders fell to the ground. As a band kid, we kept doing our routine, no going back. We were then marching towards our lovely home side, and our student section cheers for us. NOW, that group of kids I was talking about? The ones that left their side? They were now in front of our students, on our home side. All the band kids were confused, but we were there to perform, and we were still going to do so. Our drum major counts us off, and our show starts. A water bottle nearly takes her out (she's tiny), but hits a marimba. In the crowd, people from Katella are throwing trashcans, food, smoke bombs, etc at our students. A smaller group then runs to the side of the field, trying to run and mess with the band, but our director held the gate shut (our hero 😭). So we see our friends getting hit and attacked, but we can't stop the show. "Focus!" was being shout in a scatter all over the field. When we got to our closer, security was able to kick the Katella students out of the game, and our ASB went back to cheering us on. We marched off the field, got water from the parents, and never got to sit back down in the bleachers. We left early because our director didn't want us to be a part of it, and plus our seats were a mess. Everyone was bummed out, but when we were leaving on the buses, the entire stadium was surrounded by EMS: police, paramedics/EMTs, firefighters. There were at least 20 police cars around the entire perimeter. Soon after we made it back to school, but we couldn't go home until our sweet instruments arrived. We had to wait until the game was over for our trailer to come back, due to security and traffic. In the meantime, everyone checked social media to see what exactly happened. On Snapchat, people recorded the chaotic event. There were videos of the cheerleaders being taken to ambulances. And the weird thing? After all that, people attacked the BAND for leaving. Huh, funny.
Anyway, I don't want to bore you guys to death, but I just wanted to share this truly immature event that occurred between my school and our sister school. It was our breast cancer awareness game, and it's a shame people took the attention away from that by being total idiots. This event made breaking news however, and Katella canceled senior events until the students were brought forward. I believe 4 students were hospitalized, 2 being cheerleaders who couldn't breathe from the smoke. Even after this day, people from Katella still post about it, taking our "A-town" phrase and replacing it with "K-town on top." Disgusting how people post things like this on Instagram saying "we made the news haha, k-town on top" or "sneak-in was a success." Like, you sent 2 of your own students to the hospital??? Wyd?? It was truly an embarrassing night for both schools, and should never have happened.
Ps: there's an article on this incident if you guys don't believe me, I'll try to find it and add a picture, but keep in mind that the media only mentioned the smoke bombs, not the harassment on our students.
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——————————— What do you guys think about this? Could you relate in anyway? If you want, describe one of your crazy marching band experiences, I'd love to read them. ❤️🎷❤️
