After seven years of fundraising efforts, Bearden’s marching band has finally achieved its dream of affording new uniforms, which will be debuted at the Bearden’s football game against Farragut on Friday night.

“It’s just in this last year that we’ve made the big push towards [getting the uniforms],” drum major Madison Chan said. “We finally realized we weren’t getting enough money year to year because of new instruments and other things we have to pay for each year.”

Increased support from the group’s large network of alumni and general responsiveness and participation in yearly fundraisers has finally allowed for the band department to make the expensive purchase of more than 130 new uniforms that will serve the program for many years to come.

“The Bearden community has been amazing in helping the band achieve this because we got a really big response from people all over the community,” Chan said. “The Bearden High School Foundation actually agreed to match us when we reached a certain amount, so that was a huge chunk of the uniforms that they helped us raise.”

The implementation of social media in this process has also been instrumental in accomplishing their goal; advertising on outlets such as Twitter and the increasingly popular website, GoFundMe, contributed to the band’s success.

Looking forward to competition season, Chan, along with band director Mrs. Megan Christian, believe that the uniforms will allow the group to make a stronger statement as well as encourage the judges to focus on the quality of their performance, rather than the state of their uniforms which may have detracted from their evaluations in previous years.

“As people, as audiences, as evaluators and judges, see our ensemble, the visual impact is really what’s going to make the difference,” Mrs. Christian said.