I was just wondering what people do on competition days out of superstition to contribute to winning.

Personally, I never walk to the beat of any opposing band, whether it's a gock block or drumline warmup or anything even, and if I accidentally fall in step with it I intentionally fall out of step to stop. It's weird and probably has no effect, but it makes me feel better, plus we were undefeated last year when I did it.

Any other stories?

I like that one! Very cool :)

What the band does as a whole before competition performances is the band moms give every member a purple or yellow M&M (those are our school colors). Don't know if that counts as a superstition, but it isn't really a tradition.

I always have to pee as I walk into the field. I've never done a show where I didn't run to the bathroom immediately after except for pregame at UCLA.

I know this is a little gross lol but it helped takes the pressure off right before we went on, the percussion line had a spitting contest to see who could spit the furthest. It started as a joke but then just started becoming a thing.

Another season (but only one season), we were annoyed we were getting beat by our biggest rivalry but this time they were even beating us in percussion which was really, well p×ss×ng us off lol they barely marched, had a really easy book, it just was annoying (but they were doing a patriotic show that people were all gaga over. during off field warm ups we started playing their cadence which they NEVER changed and was ridiculously easy. Sure enough we started building our score and gaining on them. So each week we did it. You should have seen the look on their faces when we were playing it as they went by to their warm up area lol we still lost that year, but it was only by like .1 and man did everyone know we really won lol

Was this in drum corps?

Well, in marching band, the whole band always prayed together before heading onto the field. I'm sure that is a very common thing, but that's as much of a tradition kind of thing I can think of.

it was marching band for me

Mostly drum corps for me. But I think it's just cause I drank a lot before shows so I wouldn't get cottonmouth.

I marched a show sick once and that happened, worst experience ever

At my high school, the drum major would tap the top of everyone's shakos every football game and at competitions. I don't know if they still do that or not.

At my school, when we are preforming at Lucas Oil, we duck when going through a doorway. Also, our mello section always makes a llama with our hands and does a chant.

I've noticed this season when we're pairing up to walk to the field (we always go 2 by 2) I always go on the right side. I'm not sure how it happened, but that's what I've done for this entire season

@cjbuckley1997 same

These last two years, my percussion section has "broken bread" together during contest, homemade bread made by the bass captain, with the ceremony led by the Drumline section leader. We kinda sorta model it off of Christianity (many of us are Christian, and we do it just for fun with no intent, so it's not like sacreligious or anything) and the Last Supper because the section leader breaks it and hands it out after we say a prayer to our drum gods - Zildjan, Dynasty, and Innovative Percussion - because that's what we use. Lol

We have a thing where there is absolute silence on the bus on the way over to our competitions and our band director disembarks each bus, looking each of us into the eye. If our eyes were dead focused, then our warm ups would be really light. If we looked like we were off in space, he'd really make sure we got a GOOD warm up.

That being said, we've done pretty well in the local competitions here in Texas. Though we've never had a competition outside of region/area/state marching contests with our rival LD Bell though...

Well, one year our winterline did a show involving worshipping a totem pole and sacrficing people to it, so every section made up a Percussion god to pray to. Most of them were forgotten, but in the cymbals, we have a little ritual chant for Cymbala. It goes like this: Hya na na na! Hya na na na! Hya na na na! (repeat as needed) Hya na na na! SACRIFICE! We mark time through the whole thing, do a flat tap on the hya and an Eval/wave crash on the SACRIFICE because the prep lines up with the syllables.

For regular season we have a weird sort of band handshake we do before really important comps, and at finals we have a "Senior Circle" where everyone plays the show for the seniors one last time.

Oh and in the trombones we have a rehearsal tradition (kind of irrelevant) where one of the tuba players comes by and "checks" everyone's slide lock in the hornstack. It's a good way to teach new members to lock their slides, but sometimes we have to tell said tuba player about broken ones that don't lock.

My high school (secondary school as they call it here in Singapore) band wouldn't allow us to wear watches as they might scratch the instruments that we handle or may accidently knock one over.

Our band tends to believe that the harder we collide with judges the more points we get ;)