The Marching Pride of Lawrence Township didn’t perform as well as they’d hoped in this year’s state competition. But instead of feeling defeated and giving up, the student musicians rallied to place 20th in the nation only a month later.
Stefan Roose, Lawrence North High School band director, said the group was just shy of making it into the Indiana State School Music Association semifinals, and it was the first time in a long time that they didn’t get to that level.
“I’ll be honest, it was a hard thing for the kids to go through,” he said. “But on the flip side, for (Bands of America), which was like 30 days later — a full month later — we did the best we’ve done since 2019, which was huge.”
DiaShamar Marshall, Lawrence Central High School’s band director, said the 160 band members showed their work ethic and resilience during that month of practice in between ISSMA and BOA.
“Our kids were kind of walking with a little bit with a chip on their shoulder, like, ‘Wait a second, we want to be one of the best, and so we have to kind of go out here and prove why we should be one of the best,’” Marshall said. “That’s not an easy thing to do when you take a punch in the middle of your season like our students did.”
Marching Pride’s preliminary performance for BOA was on the Friday of the three-day competition Nov. 9-11 at Lucas Oil Stadium, and Roose said they sent the kids home after their set to rest and wait for the results. When they found out that they were in the semifinals, he said, some of the kids took videos of their reactions for the group chat.
“They were freaking out with joy,” he said. “They were so excited. When we came in Saturday morning — our call time was like 6 a.m. — I expected them to be a little tired, but they were pumped. They were so excited to come in, like it was just pure bliss.”
Marshall said he was pretty emotional watching the Marching Pride’s preliminary performance because he knew how hard the students had worked to improve. He said the best part was seeing the smiles on their faces afterward, because they knew they had done well.
“I would have been 100 percent OK if we had not advanced to national semifinals because the kids had such a high level of performance on Friday and their preliminary performance,” he said.
Roose added that they both had told the kids to give their best performance possible for the preliminaries, “which they did and (then) Saturday was even better.”
The Marching Pride is a combined band of the two Lawrence Township high schools. Their show for the 2023 season was called “The Art of Being.”
“The show was really about recognizing individuality and the uniqueness of the individual person and celebrating that,” Marshall said.
Music included “Cambridge 1963,” “Being,” “Red Machine,” “Dance, First Movement” and a ballad called “A True Passion,” which Marshall said is from a National Geographic documentary about the artist Picasso.
“Our show really revolved around the artistic side of individuality,” he said. “There’s a lot of painting and splashes and very bright colors, vibrant colors. The idea behind it was really to have a highly intellectual and highly emotional show, so that way we are able as performers to connect to the audience on a human level.”
Both directors said participating in marching band benefits students in the short and long term.
“It teaches resiliency, which is definitely a learned trait that so many of these young people need to have in the real world,” Roose said, adding that team-building is another trait kids learn through marching band. “They know how to work well with people, they know how to lead because they have to — there’s certain aspects of what we design and what we do, that they have to be a leader, they have to be resilient and what they’re doing (and) they have to do it together.”
Marshall said music and the performing arts in general tend to result in some of the best students.
“We place a high level of importance on education and academic achievement,” he said of the band program. “If you want your kids to have those things, you want them around the best … and you’re going to find those kids in the band program. Then on top of that, they just become well-rounded individuals because they learn how to handle adversity; they learn how to work and cooperate with different types of people.”
Also, they both said, marching band is just fun.
Band season starts early
Band directors Stefan Roose of Lawrence North and DiaShamar Marshall of Lawrence Central already have started planning for the 2024 Marching Pride of Lawrence Township season.
They don’t take a break when the season ends in the fall. They get busy picking the music and theme, and working on the show’s design, getting all the preliminary prep work done so the kids can start training in May and June.
In July, the students perform for the annual Lawrence Fourth of July Parade, Roose said, and then it’s time for band camp — an intense two weeks of rehearsing.
“It’s long rehearsal hours,” he said. “They’re there all day to train and get better, and we’re just rehearsing them to learn the show, as well as just building up basic fundamentals. That’s two solid weeks of July. It’s a lot to ask of high school students, but at the same time they showed up every day and worked really hard.”
Once school starts, they continue to rehearse and perform, getting ready for state and national competitions taking them through mid-November. And then, it starts all over again.
