The Center Grove Indoor Percussion program placed 12th place worldwide for the scholastic world class at WGI World Championships in Dayton, Ohio. The competition lasted four intense days, with preliminary, semi-final and final rounds.

“We’d get up early for breakfast and then we had practice for about three hours. Then we would go to the lot and practice before we performed. In our prelims performance, we got twelfth place,” junior Katie Wetherholt said. “Then, in our semi-finals performance, we also got twelfth. Only fifteen groups made it to finals, so we were able to push on and we got placed twelfth again.” 

For students, the win was huge, considering that they competed with around 500 percussion ensembles from around the world.

“Considering we’re competing against groups from around the entire country, getting anything in the top 15 is a big win. Especially considering how the season started, the win wasn’t so much our placement as it was our exponential growth over the course of the season,” junior Jonah Irons said. “It showed us that we were part of the best of the best in the country, and gave us confidence in our own skills, especially for the younger class who haven’t experienced this before due to covid shutting stuff down for two years.”

WGI championships were virtual last year, so there was no live final performance, like this year.

“Getting into finals was a step forward for the program because we haven’t been able to compete in WGI since 2019. Not being able to compete at such a level in such a long time has had a big impact on the indoor program,” junior Bella Swango said. “Now, having experienced WGI, I now understand that going back and performing at such a high level and being in finals is really important for us to continue moving forward and keep the momentum of the program going.”

The Indoor Percussion season comes to a conclusion with the WGI world championships, spending their time honing their skills in classes before marching band season picks up in the summer.