On Saturday March 8th, the band continued its amazing musical journey by placing third at the 2025 Midlands Regional Championships.
This year’s venue was the Civic Hall in Bedworth. After an early start, and a short rehearsal just a few minutes walk from the contest venue, we learned that we drew no.10 out of the 15 bands competing.
The band gave a solid performance, resulting in a third place finish, and good feedback from the adjudicators.
This not only qualifies the band for a third successive appearance at the National Finals in September, it has also earned us promotion to the Second Section – effective from January 1st 2026 – something that barely seemed possible to anyone in the band when we entered our first contest in 2020!
We often get asked what the different tiers of banding are.
To keep things simple, there are 5 “leagues” – or as they’re called in brass banding, “Sections”.
From top to bottom, they are as follows:
- Championship Section
- First Section
- Second Section
- Third Section
- Fourth Section
When we entered the world of contesting in 2020, we had to start at the bottom, in the Fourth Section.
We quickly gained promotion to the Third Section just two years ago, and now we find ourselves moving quickly into the next tier, the Second Section, from January next year.
So as you can see, our rise has been nothing short of meteoric. It is testament to the incredible amount of hard work that goes into contesting – from every single player – but none more so than from our MD, Nathan, who consistently (and patiently!) whips us into shape and gets us contest-ready, every single time.
So for now, we look forward to our upcoming programme of concert dates, and the busy summer season, before our minds turn to the National Finals in September.