Hello all,

I teach at a rural small school district. Both our HS and MS bands earned a sweepstakes last year but this year's MS group has some instrumentation issues that are making me reconsider taking them to UIL. We don't have a tuba player and only have one percussionist. I think we can work out the percussion issues by moving kids around but my question is: can we earn a 1 on stage without a tuba? Moving kids to tuba, bass clarinet, or bari sax are not options for this particular group. The 2 trombones and 2 euphs that we have are capable players on their home instrument but struggled to make a good sound on the tuba. Whether we end up going to contest and not doing well or not going to contest at all, I don't want it to seem like we are taking a step backward in our program.