The Sound of the Swarm Mineola High School marching band earned its fifth state championship last Wednesday night in San Antonio.

The band has won five of the last six state contests in Conference 3A. And since advancing to state for the first time in 2015, the Swarm has won a medal every time, with a bronze in 2015, silver in 2023 and five golds – three in a row, 2017, 2109 and 2021 and two straight in 2024 and ’25.

With the theme of Viewfinder, the band topped 24 competitors, placing first in the preliminary and finals rounds.

The judges ranked Mineola first on four of the five preliminary round scorecards with three firsts, a third and a fourth in the finals.

Silver medalist was Raymondville, last year’s fourth-place finisher.

The bronze went to Atlanta, edging out Redwater, meaning three of the top four bands at state compete in Mineola’s region.

Three-time winner Whitesboro placed fifth for the second straight year. It was the winner in 2013, 2015 and 2023, with a bronze and two silvers during Mineola’s first three title years.

With its fifth win, Mineola moves into a tie for sixth place all-time in wins across all classifications

Cedar Park won its seventh in a row this year and became the first band to win nine overall. Sundown and Argyle each have eight while Georgetown and Iraan have seven apiece.

When Band Director Jim Best took over the already-successful program in 2022, he said they knew the task at hand, and that the administration was interested in maintaining the level of excellence established under Chris Brannan, with whom Best previously worked at MHS.

It’s not getting any easier, Best noted, with the top five bands in the state all high-quality programs.

Indeed the final scoring had Mineola with 10 points and Raymondville just two points behind with 12 in the total scores from the five judges.

Mineola’s statewide recognition did not happen without support from an entire team, from administration to band boosters to the community.

In last year’s grant from the Meredith Foundation to MISD was $100,000 for new instruments.

Best pointed out that many of the instruments bought with those funds were on the field for the championship.

He explained in his presentation to the school board Monday that almost three full high school bands have gone through the program since Mineola first started qualifying for state in 2015.

That consistency begins at the middle school level, where that band was among the tops in the state in the honor band competition.

Those students were ready to move into the high school program, and it showed in the quality of their musical performance this year.

There are a lot of moving parts to a successful band program, he said, and it’s a cool thing the way it works in Mineola.

Not every school has that, he said, with all the pieces to the pie.

“Everybody works their tails off,” Best said. “Everybody all the time.”

The year’s program, Viewfinder, developed through a lot of collaboration of ideas, that more-or-less coalesced into a sequel to the 2021 program “Hometown.”

Best described it as a memoir, and a love letter to the band program.

The visual backdrops were photos taken from high school annuals.

Band fans will recognize the circles that made up the viewfinders as being recycled from the Olympic rings from the 2023 program.

Drum majors this year are Tori Kinder, Stephanie Rojas and Emily Vega, who lead a band with 127 members, one of the largest in the competition.

There are only 16 seniors while 50 freshmen took the field. And there are 60 eighth graders waiting to move in next year – one of the reasons they needed all those new instruments.

“It’s a work of love,” he told the school board. “It’s inspiring to see them be successful year after year…more than we can describe.”