Does anyone have any information about middle school marching bands back in the day? I'm doing some research and am having trouble finding any information. Additionally, are there any still around? I'm thinking maybe in East Texas?
Years ago, junior highs with 9th graders (the true "junior high" designation in the eyes of UIL [as opposed to "middle schools"]) would participate in UIL marching contest. In my hometown the junior high I attended in 9th grade didn't do marching, other than a parade. However, there were some UIL Sweepstakes trophies in the case for marching, concert and sight reading from the early 1960's.
As a side note: Only bands making first divisions in all three categories earned "Sweepstakes". Bands, Choirs, and Orchestras earning first divisions in concert and sight reading received a "Special Award" plaque.
In the Rio Grande Valley, junior high marching bands participated in the "Pigskin Jubilee" UIL marching contests from 1952 through 1978. I got this information from the Region 15 band website which maintains online copies of Pigskin programs all the way back to 1940. I myself marched and competed with the Mission Junior High band in 1967 and 1968.
I grew up in Texas City and attended Blocker Midddle School. We used to march military and played for every home football game, but we never attended UIL Marching Contest. This was 1978 - 1980.
I don't have much info before the 80s, but looking through the BrynnPark archive, Several rural districts had a couple junior highs competing at UIL Marching in the 80's and 90's:
Lufkin had 2 junior highs (East & West) that competed in UIL Marching (Region 21) until sometime shortly before 1990.
Gilmer, Pine Tree and Liberty-Eylau (Texarkana) had junior highs competing in Region 4 during the 80's. Liberty-Eylau was still competing as late as '98 and possibly into the 2000's.
Pampa and Dumas (near Amarillo) fielded JH groups at UIL as well (Region 1) during the 80s. Dumas JH dropped out in the late 80's, Pampa JH's final competitive appearance was in '92.
Region 10 had 5 main middle schools who competed during the 80s: Vidor Intermediate, Wilson MS, Wilson JH-Nederland, Edison JH and Central JH. All of these groups had stopped competing by the 90's.
Region 6 has been "JH Marching Central" for many years. I couldn't tell you when it all began, but they were fielding well over a dozen JH/MS marching groups at UIL annually throughout the 80s. Ector County (Odessa) seems to be the district responsible for spearheading this as they continuously sent all of their middle school groups to UIL Marching year after year throughout the 80s and 90s (Midland sent quite a few as well), before it was widespread in this region as well as when it started to die down in the 90s. I'm sure the unique football culture at Odessa & Permian had a lot to do with establishing this. And by "die down" I mean by 2000 the number of MS bands competing had dwindled to about a half dozen. Anyway, Walker JH in Monahans is the only middle school marching band from this region AND in the state of Texas that still regularly competes and they've been the only MS marching band in the state at UIL since the pandemic.
Looking through recent results, here are the JH/MS groups that have competed at UIL. There are some entries that are a little confusing (like some schools are labeled C Var Composite...which I don't think is even a category, so I've left those off). I also noticed some schools have the local town MS entered but not the HS, or the ISD's one single school is labeled C Var...which makes me wonder if it's a misprint (not all the UILforms site data is 100% accurate). Several of these anomalies are from Region 4, so those COULD be accurate, but I've left them off anyway:
And always keep in mind there are more than a handful of Composite K-12 single campus schools in this state who drop their kids directly into the HS marching band the very next year after they complete 6th grade beginning band. And there probably at least 100 more who march their 8th graders with their HS groups.