Friday night. An integral part of the culture at many high schools across the country. The student section is roaring, the lights are blinding, and football players keep the energy up as they march towards the locker room. At half time, the lights are still bright, but the student section is seated in anticipation of the coming quarters. The Marching Thunderhawks have taken the field to perform.

East senior and section leader Ella Galliers has been playing the trumpet for six years after joining Independence Elementary’s sixth grade band and has been participating in marching band for three seasons.

A section leader is a position in a marching band who helps teach members in their section with both music and marching. Section leaders are in charge of informing other players of corrections, keeping them in line, sending reminders, and answering any questions they may have.

East senior Sydney Lewis is a drum major and a saxophone soloist in the marching band. Lewis has played saxophone for five years after making a switch from percussion. A drum major helps conduct the band by standing on podiums during the show, along with helping prepare things when the band is off the field. Along with keeping fellow band members on task, drum majors also set up speakers and move around equipment to make sure practices and performances run as smoothly as possible.

This year’s show is called “Forever,” and focuses on diamonds. Part one is called “Precious,” part two is called “Love,” and part three is called “Forever.” Each part is a different aspect of what a diamond represents.

In comparison to a concert band, marching band requires more multitasking. Every note must be played correctly, the music must be memorized, members must march and not run into anyone, and most importantly, stay on time. Hundreds of components go through their brains all at the same time.

“You have to have the correct posture and way of marching, so that you’re not moving around too much and so your instrument stays still, so you’re still able to play well.” Lewis told Spark. “It’s a lot of physical work, as well as mental. One of our staff members says, ‘You have to have the upper body of the Cincinnati Symphony and the lower body of the Cincinnati Bengals.’”

Marching band members receive the music for the upcoming season in the spring before the show, so they have the summer to learn the music.

“The idea is that you should have it completely memorized by the time we start actually learning the show during band camp,” said Lewis.

Before heading out to the field, the marching band practices all together in the theater. This allows the players to grasp what the pieces are supposed to sound like in order to prepare them for when they move to the field.

“The football field is so big, so you cannot listen to people on the other side of the field because there’s a sound delay,” said Lewis. “So you have to watch the drum majors, or right now we have a metronome. You cannot really listen to each other, you just have to trust each other.”

The band camp for the 2024-25 school year was from July 22 to August 9. The first week of band camp is learning fundamentals, like how to march properly, with exercises such as marching straight forward and straight backwards. The last two weeks are learning the routine and beginning to put the show together and repeating it until it eventually becomes a subconscious skill.

“Band camp makes up about a third of all the time that we will practice a routine,” said Galliers. “It’s a really good way to be able to spend a lot of time on the fundamentals like marching and playing techniques. It’s a great way to get the basics down, so we have a good opportunity to begin learning a large portion of the show so then later in the season we do not have to worry about learning it.”

In order to learn the routine, each member is assigned a letter and a number that corresponds, which is spray painted largely across each player’s shirt. This allows the directors from the box to identify which player is which and give further direction based on their observations. The box is an elevated platform located to the north of Lakota East adjacent to the parking lot where the band practices.

“We also get a dot sheet or a coordinate sheet,” said Galliers. “The sheets are personalized for each number and letter combination and act like a coordinate grid. Kind of like graphing in math class, you find a certain side to side coordinate on the field, and then find your front to back coordinate on the field.”

Each show typically has around 80 coordinates. Players learn each of their dots and begin to piece them together to create a fluid motion and a continuous show. The process is repeated, and eventually, music is added in to create the full performance.

Marching band shows are traditionally three parts, and the East marching band follows that tradition. Part one is called the opener, part two is referred to as the ballad, and part three is called the closer.

The opener and the closer are usually similar. Both parts are a faster tempo, louder, and powerful, with more brass sounds. On the other hand, the ballad typically has a slower and smoother sound.

“We break it up into three parts because it is easier for us, especially with tempo changes,” said Galliers. “We get a different sheet of music for each part, and there is a different set of dots for each part.”

Throughout the football season, the Marching Thunderhawks continue to learn more of the show, along with using half-time of football games as practice for their routine along with practice for performing in front of an audience.

“During band camp, we typically get part one done,” said Galliers. “As soon as band camp is over, those first few practices will learn part two. We will work on cleaning up part one and maybe add on a little bit of part three to present at the first few competitions, and so we have more and more of our show to present to the audience.”

The Marching Thunderhawks compete in two different competition organizations: Ohio Music Education Association (OMEA) and Bands of America (BOA).

“For OMEA, each competition is a Saturday, and there will be 10 to 20 bands,” said Lewis. “We all perform one time. The judges score based on music, visuals, and marching. There is also a percussion specific judge and a color guard specific judge. In the end, we get a score out of 100 and there is a winner.”

For the 2024-25 school year, the East marching band is attending two BOA competitions.The first was a regional event in Chattanooga, Tennessee on Oct. 5.

“At regionals, there are going to be 30 to 40 bands there,” said Lewis. “We will do three rounds. Everyone competes once, and then the top ten-ish bands make finals, where they perform again, and then the final winner is declared from the end.”

The second BOA competition that the Marching Thunderhawks will be competing in is Grand Nationals in Indianapolis at Lucas Oil Stadium November 14-16.

“This competition consists of [preliminary rounds], semi-finals, and then finals,” said Lewis. “We have made the semi-finals twice.”

For both competition organizations, how the band performs at one competition does not affect their scoring or performance for the next competition, they are completely separate.

On the sidelines at football games, the Marching Thunderhawks also play stand tunes in order to keep the atmosphere lively. East stand tunes are classic rock songs along with songs that college marching bands play: Hawaii Five-O, 25 or 6 to 4, Paint it Black, and Crazy Train.

“It is just a fun time for us to get to be, like our director says, getting to be a kid,” said Galliers. “It is fun for us to hang out with each other, be able to talk to each other, which we can’t really do in rehearsals, we get to play music, and it’s not like we’re not being judged on the songs we play, so we can be ourselves and have fun with it.”

James Luu, the section leader of the mellophones, a smaller type of french horn, thinks his senior season is a success. At the Regional Event in Chattanooga, the marching Thunderhawks placed third with a score of 77.050.

“As a section leader, I love meeting and working with people” said Luu. “I have made so many close friends through marching band that I wouldn’t have met otherwise.”

Through playing and practicing together from the summer until the end of fall, the work that the marching Thunderhawks put into the show is clearly present.

“Our director always says,” said Lewis, “‘It’s not a sport, it’s life.’”