Every home football game at South for the past several years has arrived with the guarantee of a spectacular halftime show awash with green and gold courtesy of the Rompin’ Stompin’ Raider Band. Next year, the colorful shows will transition to a newer, darker look as the classic bright colors of the old uniforms are switched out for new ones.

“The [uniforms] this year are light green and light gold and next year’s ones are going to be all black with a little bit of green and like stripes of gold,” freshman band member Lara Legg said.

There were a few key reasons that went into the decision to replace the current uniforms.  According to band director Steve Adams, “The current uniforms were thirteen years old and from a distance, they were fine, but close up you could see a lot of wear on it. And, frankly the district just has a regular replacement cycle and it’s our turn.”

Both the teachers and the students in band this year had a say in how the uniforms would look. Adams, along with Indian Woods band teacher Megan Earney and South Spanish teacher Cynthia Hartwell created the base designs for the uniforms and allowed the students to decide on the final details.

“They’re going to be primarily black with green and gold highlights. That’s kind of the new style, it’s really striking. The way we came up with it is that I went down with Ms. Hartwell and Mrs. Earney to the Fruhauf Factory in Wichita, and they’re one of the best uniform companies in the country, and we spent about four hours with their designers and just played with a bunch of ideas, and narrowed it down to four, and the students have kind of picked their favorites,” Adams said.

The change in uniforms brings with it the potential for change in other aspects of the show and other marching band operations. “It will affect the show next year, we won’t have them this year, but yes, once we get the uniforms we’ll see how the colors work under the lights. I don’t know what the effect will be yet, but there will be,” Adams said.

Any changes that might have occurred in the distribution of the new uniforms will be prevented by the computerization. The uniforms will be ordered via the internet, making the whole process far easier.

“We always have to do a lot of adjustments with the size of the uniforms, but these are already made so you don’t have to sew them, you just fold them up and they button in, so that’s going to make things a lot easier too,” Adams said.

Students in the marching band have varying opinions of the new uniforms. In the eyes of some students, new is always better, whereas others adapt less willingly to change and prefer the uniforms they have grown accustomed to in past years.

Junior band member Greta Carlson stated that she preferred, “the old ones because I’m used to them. They’re colorful.”

Other students prefer the darker allure of the uniforms that will be used next year. “I like them both, but I like the new ones better,” Legg said.

Whatever their stance on the uniforms that will be introduced next year, students cannot argue the facts that the dusky new uniforms will assuredly open up a number of ways to manipulate the new look to create a more invigorating show with a clearer theme, and despite a few students  feeling emotionally attached to the old uniforms, most band students are excited for such an intriguing change.