As the drums beat and performers march a show to the music, adrenaline rushes the performers and pushes them to perfection.

Indoor drumline is an intense and rigorous activity that challenges performers physically and mentally. Performers work to memo- rize music and marching patterns to impress judges and compete in competitions all over the state.

Indoor drumlines are very common among many large high schools in San Anto- nio and Rio Grande Valley area, but the activity has not thrived well in Austin. This is why many of their competitions have been held in San Antonio and Dallas areas.

Akins until this year has not had an indoor drumline. As it is the first year, there is only 24 total people in the program, 11 in the marching line, and 13 in the front ensemble, who play the larger instruments without marching on the field.

This is a little smaller than the indoor drumline director John McClain had hoped for, but it turned out to be the exact number that

the group needed for the size of the show that was per- formed, he said.

McClain hopes the drumline will increase to about 45 members in the coming years to be able to compete with larger drumlines.

Normally, before even placing in most competi- tions, indoor drumlines must go through years of figuring out the rules, procedures and general groove of things. Despite the Akins’ group’s inexperience, the Akins team won the state AAA championship.

This did not happen with- out struggle though. At their first competition, the indoor drumline ranked 8th place. Placing low can often bring down team morale, however, in this instance the indoor drumline made a commit- ment to themselves to not let that happen again.

“The kids didn’t like the feeling of finishing that low,” McClain said. “ It re- ally made them step up and work a lot harder. That con- tributed to us winning our class at state.”

Because of their first competition, the team worked about 10 hours a week and even committed 10 hours of their spring break to prepare for the state competition.