Marching Band: A true endurance sport!

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I was in marching band through Senior High School. I hated it in high school mostly because the band director was a jerk. I was a constant source of frustration to him. The only type of shows we did were picture shows, a la university of Houston and West Virginia University. I did it only because it was the only way I would ever get my athletic letter and sweater.

When I started college, IUP had just hired a new marching band director by the name of Charles Casavant, the son of Arthur R Casavant, who was an internationally-known field technician from Chattanooga, TN. A.R. Developed a style of marching that was known as exhibition marching, which greatly influenced modern day Drum and Bugle Corps.

Dr. Casavant learned my name real fast, since I had 2 left feet. By the time I graduated in 1980, the running joke was "hey, halftime's over. Everyone go home." At that time IUP football was the worst team in PCAC Western Division.

That was the year the football team learned you do not mess with the marching band. The football team had a new coach that year. Coach had enough of the crap the team gave the Marching band. He arranged with Dr. Casavant to dig the brass sousaphones out of storage, and put the football team through our drills. To make a long story short, the football team never again harassed the marching band, as most of the football team couldn't handle our drill.

Also, my senior year, was the year when a male queen was elected as Homecoming queen. Western PA is quite conservative and redneck. The night before the game, there was a riot in Downtown Indiana. At rehearsal the next morning, the brothers of Phi Mu Alpha, since all the men were members of that organization in the band, decided we were going to march with bricks underneath our uniform coats, as the marching band preceded the queen's float, and the parade route went down fraternity row. Somehow, the word got out that the men in the marching band had these bricks to the fraternity houses. The frags waited until the marching band was safely past before pummeling the queen's float with rotten eggs.

I was in IUP marching band in 1980. Does Meistersinger care to reveal himself?

I graduated Spring 1980. You probably missed me by one semester. I was probably the only music history major that marched, much to the chagrin of Dr. Godt, my so-called academic advisor.

I've always lamented that my high school's band never played at sporting events! I would've definitely been better off trying to date one of the band geeks instead of pursuing the cheerleaders and girl jocks who were never interested in me.