Coolest damn article ever!
FALL PRACTICE STARTS: Marching bands walk the walk
Conditioning is key to the show, metro Detroit members note
August 11, 2005
BY PEGGY WALSH-SARNECKI
FREE PRESS EDUCATION WRITER
Practice for the start of fall season is under way at Chippewa Valley High School, and players are lined up and ready to take the field. Water bottles litter the sidelines. The stretches and running warm-ups are done, and it's time to get serious.
Nope, it's not the football team. This is the marching band, and these kids are every bit as athletic as the football players who get first crack at the field they both use. At least that's what Chippewa's band director Tim Hoey says.
"Not only are you marching, but it takes balance ... you're also playing at the same time, so you're losing breath," Hoey said after practice last week at the school.
Marching band members need stamina and passion to perform at the intense levels expected by their coaches. Many metro area high school marching bands practice rain or shine every day for two to three hours before and after school and some on the weekends.
And it's more than playing an instrument. It's being a team player, memorizing every piece of music, holding the instrument a certain way, standing a certain way and learning new ways of walking and running.
It takes a lot of conditioning to pull that off, said Sarah Grojean, 17, who plays mellophone in Chippewa's band and also runs on the track team.
Plymouth-Canton has one of the premier marching bands in Michigan, with a budget of $300,000 raised mostly by students, parents and other music boosters. It has won at least 17 state championships.
In his marching days, director of bands Marc Whitlock was a member of Star of Indiana, a drum and bugle corps. The University of Indiana's medical school used the corps to test band members against athletes.
"They hooked up a machine that measures airflow in and out of the human body to Dave Reeves, a tenor drummer," Whitlock said. Tenor drums are a set of six drums carried over the shoulders that weighs 50 to 70 pounds.
After Reeves performed in an 11-minute show, the study found his airflow intake to be comparable to a well-conditioned track or swimming athlete's, Whitlock said.
Lighter instruments such as flutes don't make marching band members less athletic, Whitlock said.
"They still have to be well-conditioned to go for 11 minutes while moving and literally exhaling. And being a lighter instrument, their step size will be larger," he said.
Plymouth-Canton's first musical piece in this year's show has 184 beats per minute, he said, meaning band members will take 184 steps per minute. "That's far more athletic than people might think," Whitlock said. But respect for the physical aspects of band falls short, say some band members.
David Bellomy, 14, a football player at Cass Technical High School in Detroit, agrees that marching bands work hard and exercise. But he wouldn't completely agree they're athletes.
"It doesn't take as much a toll on the body" as sports do, Bellomy said.
Sometimes, that attitude can be disappointing. Andrew Zalewski, 16, of Clinton Township and a drummer in L'Anse Creuse High School's marching band, said sometimes football players or other students jeer, despite the fact that L'Anse Creuse's band regularly qualifies for the state finals -- and the football team doesn't.
"They call us, like, band geeks or band nerds," Zalewski said. "I don't think any of the people involved in sports activities look at it as being a strenuous activity because it doesn't involve kicking a ball around or tackling other people. We do a lot of physical activity, a lot of running. It's just like doing a sport."
This was in the Detroit Free Press, August 11th!!
The Michigan High School Athletic Association leaves it up to each school to define what constitutes a sport. When enough schools sponsor a sport, MHSAA sponsors a postseason tournament. That's not the case with bands because the Michigan School Band and Orchestra Association sponsors their state championships. But that doesn't mean band isn't a sport, said MHSAA spokesman John Johnson.
"The issue of whether a person in band is an athlete is irrelevant. The benefits remain the same," he said. "The lessons learned are similar in many respects, and it doesn't matter if it's an instrument or a football."
Most high schools give physical education credit and award varsity letters to marching band members.
And some aspects of band get national attention. ESPN2 will cover the drum and bugle corps national championship on Sept. 6. Drum and bugle corps is the nonschool version of marching band.
Marching band has been changing since the advent of drum and bugle corps around World War II, said Russell Hilton, L'Anse Creuse director of bands. The athleticism really began to increase during the 1980s, he said.
"I think peers see it as old-fashioned marching band," Hilton said. "Unless they've done it, they don't understand it."
Conditioning is key to the show, metro Detroit members note
August 11, 2005
BY PEGGY WALSH-SARNECKI
FREE PRESS EDUCATION WRITER
Practice for the start of fall season is under way at Chippewa Valley High School, and players are lined up and ready to take the field. Water bottles litter the sidelines. The stretches and running warm-ups are done, and it's time to get serious.
Nope, it's not the football team. This is the marching band, and these kids are every bit as athletic as the football players who get first crack at the field they both use. At least that's what Chippewa's band director Tim Hoey says.
"Not only are you marching, but it takes balance ... you're also playing at the same time, so you're losing breath," Hoey said after practice last week at the school.
Marching band members need stamina and passion to perform at the intense levels expected by their coaches. Many metro area high school marching bands practice rain or shine every day for two to three hours before and after school and some on the weekends.
And it's more than playing an instrument. It's being a team player, memorizing every piece of music, holding the instrument a certain way, standing a certain way and learning new ways of walking and running.
It takes a lot of conditioning to pull that off, said Sarah Grojean, 17, who plays mellophone in Chippewa's band and also runs on the track team.
Plymouth-Canton has one of the premier marching bands in Michigan, with a budget of $300,000 raised mostly by students, parents and other music boosters. It has won at least 17 state championships.
In his marching days, director of bands Marc Whitlock was a member of Star of Indiana, a drum and bugle corps. The University of Indiana's medical school used the corps to test band members against athletes.
"They hooked up a machine that measures airflow in and out of the human body to Dave Reeves, a tenor drummer," Whitlock said. Tenor drums are a set of six drums carried over the shoulders that weighs 50 to 70 pounds.
After Reeves performed in an 11-minute show, the study found his airflow intake to be comparable to a well-conditioned track or swimming athlete's, Whitlock said.
Lighter instruments such as flutes don't make marching band members less athletic, Whitlock said.
"They still have to be well-conditioned to go for 11 minutes while moving and literally exhaling. And being a lighter instrument, their step size will be larger," he said.
Plymouth-Canton's first musical piece in this year's show has 184 beats per minute, he said, meaning band members will take 184 steps per minute. "That's far more athletic than people might think," Whitlock said. But respect for the physical aspects of band falls short, say some band members.
David Bellomy, 14, a football player at Cass Technical High School in Detroit, agrees that marching bands work hard and exercise. But he wouldn't completely agree they're athletes.
"It doesn't take as much a toll on the body" as sports do, Bellomy said.
Sometimes, that attitude can be disappointing. Andrew Zalewski, 16, of Clinton Township and a drummer in L'Anse Creuse High School's marching band, said sometimes football players or other students jeer, despite the fact that L'Anse Creuse's band regularly qualifies for the state finals -- and the football team doesn't.
"They call us, like, band geeks or band nerds," Zalewski said. "I don't think any of the people involved in sports activities look at it as being a strenuous activity because it doesn't involve kicking a ball around or tackling other people. We do a lot of physical activity, a lot of running. It's just like doing a sport."
This was in the Detroit Free Press, August 11th!!
The Michigan High School Athletic Association leaves it up to each school to define what constitutes a sport. When enough schools sponsor a sport, MHSAA sponsors a postseason tournament. That's not the case with bands because the Michigan School Band and Orchestra Association sponsors their state championships. But that doesn't mean band isn't a sport, said MHSAA spokesman John Johnson.
"The issue of whether a person in band is an athlete is irrelevant. The benefits remain the same," he said. "The lessons learned are similar in many respects, and it doesn't matter if it's an instrument or a football."
Most high schools give physical education credit and award varsity letters to marching band members.
And some aspects of band get national attention. ESPN2 will cover the drum and bugle corps national championship on Sept. 6. Drum and bugle corps is the nonschool version of marching band.
Marching band has been changing since the advent of drum and bugle corps around World War II, said Russell Hilton, L'Anse Creuse director of bands. The athleticism really began to increase during the 1980s, he said.
"I think peers see it as old-fashioned marching band," Hilton said. "Unless they've done it, they don't understand it."