The SPOKE

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The SPOKE

The SPOKE

Band managers keep band together

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By Mira Harris, Staff Reporter

At the start of the third quarter, the rest of the marching band pours out of the stands to take a break, but the band managers get to work. At this moment, their job is to take the equipment off the field as fast as possible and then reload them back into the trailer. 

“We have to get everything onto the field and into the trailer in a sufficient amount of time. Being fast is kind of hard when you’re moving around heavy and large materials,” freshman Alvin Dong said. 

Dong originally planned on playing the tuba in the marching band, but became a band manager after being unable to attend the mandatory two-week summer camp. He learned that the job is not as easy as it looks. Senior Andrew Ward explains that the difficulty of the job is what brings the band managers together. 

“We have very different schedules from the rest of the band when we do work and when we aren’t doing work. You are a lot of times the first to arrive and the last to leave,” Ward said. 

Although Dong is planning on joining the full marching band as a tuba in the fall, he says that if he is somehow unable to attend band camp again, he will continue being a band manager. 

On the other end of the spectrum, senior Andrew Ward has been a band manager for the past three years. He started in the Pit but decided that becoming a band manager would be a great way to stay involved without having to play an instrument. Over his past three years as a band manager, one of the most rewarding moments was the Disney trip in 2018. 

“One of my favorite experiences as a band manager was when we got to go to Disney and go behind the scenes to help run our band’s parade,” Ward said.

Both Dong and Ward feel that the important work band managers do to keep the marching band running is often overlooked.

“I feel like a lot of times nobody really sees what we actually do,” Ward said. “They just kind of think that we set up the half time show and take it down, but we have so many responsibilities and so many things that take a lot of training to know how to do. It’s not as easy as it necessarily looks.”  


Mira Harris can be reached at [email protected]

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