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SFU Pipe Band drum major named champion, band claims fifth place
The SFU Pipe Band remains in the ‘elite six’ with a fifth-place finish after the World Pipe Band championships in Glasgow on the weekend, while the band’s drum major is celebrating his title as the adult drum major world champion—for the fifth time.
Jason Paguio received the honor on Aug. 17 during the event’s awards ceremony. Paguio, a San Diego land use advisor and member of the U.S. Coast Guard auxiliary, performs with the SFU band in local contests, the world championships and at concerts, and is a drum major instructor in several countries around the world.
In 2007 he made history as the first drum major outside the United Kingdom to win the title at the Worlds event. He went on to be a finalist 10 consecutive times and won titles in 2010, 2013, 2014 and again in 2019, making him the most successful active competitor at the world championships.
The 45-member SFU Grade 1 band, led by Pipe Major Alan Bevan, competed in a field of 15 of the world’s best bands over the two-day event. The winners were Scottish band Inveraray & District, followed by the 2018 winner Field Marshal Montgomery of Northern Ireland. St. Laurence O’Toole of Ireland took third and Scottish Power pipe band, fourth.
The bands perform (and are judged) twice on each of the event’s two days. The SFU band finished first in the medley category during Saturday’s competition—watch the performance here— and third in the March, Strathspey and Reel (MSR).
In all more than 200 bands of various grades competed at the event before a crowd of 30,000 spectators.
In the lead-up to the Worlds in Glasgow, SFU Pipe Sergeant Jack Lee won the 2019 Silver Chanter, the annual invitational piobaireachd (the Gaelic word for piping) competition.
In early August he also won the bar to the gold medal competition, for previous winners of the Piobaireachd Society gold medal, during the North American Pipe Band Champions in Maxville Ontario, adding to an arm’s length of awards that have secured him as one of the world’s best solo pipers.
The SFU band began competing at the Worlds in 1983 and has claimed six championships in 1995, 1996, 1999, 2001, 2008 and 2009. The band also has placed second more than 20 times and has remained in the elite top six all but twice (finishing 7th). This year marks the band’s third consecutive fifth place finish.