Marching bands take the field at Milner Stadium for MSHAA evaluations

Thirty-one bands took the field at Joseph W. Milner Stadium in Gulfport on Saturday for the 54th annual marching evaluation.

It’s a state-wide evaluation for the Mississippi High School Activities Association that is used to rank marching bands. Milner Stadium was one of five sites conducting evaluations to give bands their state ranking.

“With the MHSAA, they’re our governing organization in the state,” said Gulfport Band Director Westley Morehead. “They run the sports and they do a lot of the fine arts. And so this is basically that validation of the work that we do so the judges are here to judge them against the standard and to see how they rank.

“Superior is the one that everyone’s going for, it’s the highest rating, and then excellent, good and then fair, are the four ratings that you could get.”

The teams competing performed everything from the classic oldies to more modern-day hits. Morehead said the evaluation has become a staple in Gulfport.

“This is our 54th year of hosting this. So it’s kind of turned into a tradition,” Morehead said. “We’ve got parents that were here when they were a student, like I myself was here in 1988 as a student. So yeah this is something that has been a tradition.”