The success of one fine-tuned group at Richmond Hill High School might require another trophy case to be added on campus.

After winning the grand championship of three marching-band competitions in 2013 and two more last year, the Richmond Hill Marching Wildcat Band took home the top honor in its first competition this season.

The 180-member RHHS marching band received superior ratings for drum majors, music, effect and percussion and won the grand-champions award over 15 other bands at the Bulldog Brigade Marching Invitational in Thomson on Oct. 3.

“I am incredibly proud of the kids, as I have been each year,” said Daniel Kiene, director of bands at Richmond Hill High. “The kids here never cease to amaze me with what they can accomplish and how willing they are to do whatever we ask them to do to get the best show on the field.”

The Marching Wildcat Band will look to bring home more hardware over the next two weekends. The band will compete in the Warrior Invitational on Saturday in Grovetown and the LaFayette Marching Classic on Oct. 24 at Fayette County High School.

The season will conclude with the finals of the Georgia Marching Band Series on Nov. 7 in Thomson. The Marching Wildcat Band won the GMBS finals for one of its three grand championships in 2013.

“Every year, the kids — new and vets — step up to an ever-increasing amount of demand with regard to competing, performing, moving and expected maturity as we add elements of dance, corps-style marching, advanced musical concepts and overall team work,” Kiene said.

The show the Richmond Hill Marching Wildcat Band is performing this year is called “Invasion.” It has a science-fiction theme, as the students use music, marching and sound effects to portray defeating an alien ship.

The RHHS marching band is playing a similar show at this year’s football games. The big difference is that marching competitions do not have the time constraints of a football halftime — when two schools’ bands have only 20 minutes to perform, including the time to set up and get on and off the field.

“At the competitions, it is about the show,” Kiene said. “We have enough time to perform the whole show, including some electronic sound effects and more-elaborate field entrances.”

This year’s Marching Wildcat Band show is divided into three parts. The first musical selection is titled “Invasion” and “is where the main themes of the show are introduced, including a spaceship form that returns later in the closer and the ‘invasion of the aliens’ arrives,” Kiene explained.

“Then part two is ‘Desolation,’ which is actually really beautiful as music but sets the somber tone,” he continued. “Then the finale has been entitled ‘Judgment,’ and this is the movement where the aliens are confronted. The third movement is a real barnstormer and has a lot of the fast marching and playing that we are known for.”

The Marching Wildcat Band began putting in the work for this season over the summer, with a two-week camp for eight hours a day in July. During the season, the band conducts 2½-hour practices three days a week after school.

In addition, the band has what it calls a “march-a-thon” — another eight-hour practice in which instructors and clinicians are brought in to polish the show prior to the start of the competition schedule.

“We still add and clean right up to the final event every year,” Kiene said. “The show you see this Saturday will have different elements in November when we finish the season.”