MOUNT VERNON — In December 2019 before the terms COVID-19 and quarantine entered daily vocabulary, the Fredericktown marching band members had something else on their minds — Universal Studios.
Fredericktown senior Celeste Swihart, who has been the marching band field commander for the last two years, remembers the band trip to Universal Studios well.
“It was the farthest I’ve ever traveled before, going to Florida,” Swihart said. “And, we took tour buses all the way there, so we got to really get to know the person next to you and get to talk for about 18 hours.”
For Swihart, the familial bonds she has formed with her fellow band members through trips such as the one to Universal Studios her sophomore year have been what continues to drive her to stay involved.
“I love music, but I’ve definitely done marching band because of the people,” Swihart said.
Mount Vernon junior Olivia Wiley, who is the mellophone section leader of Mount Vernon’s marching band, expressed a similar sentiment.
“When I started high school band, the music was a lot more challenging, and I really appreciated that sort of challenge,” Wiley said. “But I also grew really close to the people that I got to spend time with in band, like I would say that 99% of my friends are band members.”
Fredericktown senior Taylor Whaley, who plays flute and serves as band president, first got involved with marching band after seeing people she looked up to enjoy it, she said.
“I had heard a lot of older kids talking about it, saying how good of a program it was and how friendly the directors were, so I just wanted to give it a try,” Whaley said.
Swihart, Wiley, Whaley and other students across Knox County often first get involved and remain a part of their school marching bands because of bonds with members and directors.
Also, Knox County student participation in marching band has been on the rise in recent years. Some districts have faced disruptions and slight declines in participation this year due to lasting effects from remote learning and COVID-19 health restrictions, but band directors expect the trend to pick back up.
Numbers aside, school spirit for marching bands has been growing in the county.
The bands perform at sports games, community events and compete across the country. At Fredericktown schools, it’s common to see football players and cheerleaders also play in the marching band during halftime, which assistant band director Jessica Overholt credits to the nature of small school involvement.
“This year’s band is one of the largest bands we’ve ever had in Fredericktown,” Overholt said, regarding the 99 students in the marching band this school year.
Fredericktown had similar band participation numbers when Overholt began her assistant director position during the 1997-98 school year, when there were 102 members.
Band participation reached a low during her tenure in the 2007-08 school year with 35 members, but has generally been increasing ever since, she said.
“Typical numbers for us are 70 to 80,” Overholt said. “I would say the past five years we’ve kind of hovered around those numbers, but it has grown — and despite COVID.”
Fredericktown had 75 students in the marching band during the 2018-19 year, 88 in the 2019-20 year and a dip at 77 during the 2020-21 year, band director Kathryn Metz wrote in an email to Knox Pages.
The main impact the pandemic has had on band participation in Fredericktown was a delayed start for students first getting involved, Overholt said.
“Our beginners start in fifth grade, and we weren’t able to get them started until it was around January — and typically we started in October,” Overholt said regarding the previous 2020-21 school year.
Swihart and Whaley, for example, both started band as soon as she could, with instrument instruction in fifth grade.
Beginner band participation at Fredericktown has remained around 60-75% of the fifth grade population before and throughout the pandemic. While beginner student participation has been relatively consistent throughout the pandemic for Fredericktown, that has not been the case for other Knox County districts.
Danville’s marching band, for example, has lower participation this year than years past — currently sitting around 42 students whereas average participation has been 60 for the past decade, band director Steve Butcher said.
“The year before COVID we didn’t get to start our fifth graders that year, so we were just going to start them in sixth grade but that’s when COVID hit,” Butcher said. “So they only got started halfway through the year, so they’re actually behind.
“Normally we would march them when they get into seventh grade. But this year they didn’t get to start marching, a few of them did because they were fairly advanced, but a lot of them didn’t.”
Butcher saw a drop in participation of 50% between fifth and sixth grade from the 2019-2020 to 2020-21 school years. Danville’s marching band usually comprises grades 7-12, but this year it is mainly grades 8-12, Butcher said.
Mount Vernon City Schools, the county’s largest district, starts marching students in ninth grade so the effects of fewer beginner students have not transferred to the marching band yet. But, band director Megan Aubihl anticipates they will.
Similar to the other districts, beginner band students at Mount Vernon, who start in sixth grade, have been fewer in recent years.
“Normally, we start around 65 to 70 kids and we only started about 40 kids last year, so now our current seventh grade class is down a little bit, probably sitting in around 30 to 35,” Aubihl said.
Overall, Aubihl said there have been about 10 fewer students in band the past two years, since the onset of the pandemic. The band has lost some students throughout the pandemic because they have switched to the digital academy, Aubihl said.
“In the past couple of years we’ve seen numbers as high as about 118,” Aubihl said. “This year, we’re sitting at about 106.”
Centerburg high school band director Chuck Dettmar has seen similar trends, overall growth with a slight dip in recent years.
“When I came to Centerburg in 2014 there were 48 marching band members and the highest we’ve been is 93,” Dettmar wrote to Knox Pages. “This year we are at 82, and next year is projected to be back up around 97-98.”
East Knox has also seen a slight participation decline recently. Its band has 39 students this year, a slight dip from 45 students last year, band director Elijah Henkel said. Henkel said this year’s decline is because the district had a large graduating class the previous school year.
However, Henkel expects there to be more of a dip next year and the year after, for the aforementioned reasons related to delays with starting beginner students.
“I lost a lot of my beginning kids when we had to go online and that started to feed into the middle school band program, and then starting next year, that’s going to affect the high school band program,” Henkel said.
When practice had to switch online in spring 2020, Henkel said he noticed a decrease in participation and interest.
“I think it had to do a lot with the parents trying to get all of their core classes taken care of, trying to keep up with that,” Henkel said. “I think band just kind of fell to the side, because for fifth and sixth grade in East Knox it is extra curricular. They don’t get a grade for it.”
Henkel also said he thinks many students initially join the band for the social aspect, which was absent during online learning. Aforementioned Fredericktown band students Swihart and Whaley confirmed this thought.
“It was just really hard for everyone to get that family bonding during that time,” Whaley said regarding the period of remote learning.
However, Swihart and Whaley said the pandemic has not caused a permanent rift.
“This year we’ve really gotten to come back together, have more opportunities, more trips, and just things that have helped us kind of reunite and kind of bond as a band once again,” Swihart said.
For example, this past summer Fredericktown’s band traveled to Cedar Point to perform and spend the day together. Playing at home and away games has also resumed, following last school year when marching bands could only perform at home sports games due to state travel restrictions.
In addition to students expressing the sense of community among band members has bounced back, directors including Henkel do not expect pandemic-era participation declines to continue either.
“I have 24 beginning band students, so once they start to get cycled into the high school, we’re going to start to see an uprising again,” Henkel said.
While the districts have seen recent breaks to overall increasing trends in band participation, school support for the marching band has been consistent.
“I remember my second year when we had eight kids, it wasn’t the cool thing to support,” said Henkel, who is in his seventh year as band director. “And the main reason was there weren’t a lot of kids that were involved in it. I’ve noticed that, like at the football games this school year, we have the student section that’s now sitting by the band. Before they’d be down by the end zone and they’d be far away.
“And I feel like there’s been a lot more support. The crowds have been cheering more for us during halftime. I just feel like the general support in the community has just skyrocketed.”
Regarding Mount Vernon, Aubihl has noticed a similar shift in student body support of the band, specifically noting one football game approximately three years ago when the shift became apparent.
“The student section actually stayed and watched halftime,” Aubihl said. “It was the first time that they had done that, and my colleague at the time, Andy Foreman, we kind of looked at each other and were like, ‘What are they doing? Did they come back to watch this?’
“That was really nice, and it was kind of like a turning point, I guess for the rest of the student population.”
Swihart said her time in the marching band has been marked by consistent community support.
“I think the community is really supportive, and that’s made a big difference,” Swihart said. “They really respect what we do and really appreciate bringing a good performance and having something fun to watch.”
Wiley said her favorite band memory involved a public demonstration of support from the community.
“My favorite memory would be from the Mount Vernon band festival,” she said. “I can’t exactly remember when, I think it might have been my eighth grade year, but we got done with our performance and we got a standing ovation, and it just — I got butterflies. It was awesome.”
Mount Vernon has seen improved retention in band from eighth grade to high school over the past three years, Aubihl said. While she couldn’t pinpoint the reason, Aubihl suspects one component is the high participation rate of siblings.
For example, Whaley’s younger sister recently followed in her footsteps and started band this year as a fifth grader. Similarly, Swihart’s two older sisters were in band, which Swihart said led her to pursue band in the first place.
“Knowing the older kids in the band, I always really looked up to them and thought it was really awesome,” Swihart said. “I wanted to be just like them. So that’s kind of what inspired me to do it.
“And then as I got older, I kept wanting to be like those role models I had, so I kept pushing myself to be a little bit better for the people younger than me.”
Swihart, Whaley and Wiley each noted that participating in the marching band has given them more than musical instruction, or even a tight-knit community. Band has taught them skills they will carry with them in future undertakings.
For instance, Wiley said she wants to become a music educator. Conversely, Swihart does not plan to continue with music after high school, but she has recognized skills she learned in band that will be transferable to whatever she may do.
“(Band) has taught me a lot about working with different people and organizing things collectively and learning leadership skills that I do think are going to help me in the future, but not directly through music.”
Whaley sees the skills she has acquired through band as applicable to whatever future career she may choose.
“I think it can create a lot of life lessons too, which I’ve realized,” Whaley said. “Because the directors are big on, ‘Being early is being on time. Being late is unacceptable,’ which is good for jobs in the future, and just really making you work hard.”
