At State High Football games, there is often a familiar noise coming from the stands, getting louder at halftime. This is the State High’s Marching Band.

The State High Marching Band is one of the most popular after-school activities at the high school. At the helm of the band is the drum major, with senior Luca Snyder in the position this year. Snyder explained what this role entails.

“We help solve specific problems. So we talk to [Marching Band Members]. We have weekly rank leader meetings where we talk about what social issues might be coming up, what things we want to focus on, in terms of marching and playing,“ Snyder said.

On Oct. 25, Snyder participated in his last regular season halftime performance as a member of the State High Marching Band and shared his thoughts and emotions on his final performance.

“Having supported seniors in the past as they moved on, like now, that’s actually me. So I think for all of us seniors, it was very emotional,” Snyder said.

To acknowledge this special occasion, the band played a song that the seniors played as freshmen.

“In the halftime show on senior night. We always do an opener from our first show, a closer from our second show, and then we pick a song from our freshman year that we get to play. So we played the song ‘What a Man Got to Do’ by the Jonas Brothers which was very fun,” Snyder said.

Looking back on the season, junior trombonist Lewis Gipe described the band’s performance at the Homecoming Pep Rally.

“I thought it went fine. It’s one of our more casual performances, less pressure [and] people weren’t really worried about it. I wasn’t really thinking too much about it,” Gipe stated.

Overall, Gipe was satisfied with the performance and described everyone’s role in the marching band.

“Just being a larger group, everyone has their own individual role to play to make everything seem good, everyone has to be perfect for it to be good as a whole,” Gipe said.

Marching Band Director Paul Leskowicz mentioned what goes into making the performances run as smoothly as possible.

“From having ideas on paper of what music will sound like, what the halftime show will look like, or the dots on the page, the drill formations. To then learn what that all sounds and looks like, and then polishing it and getting it better and cleaner,” Leskowicz said.

Leskowicz also described the halftime shows at football games and the band’s future plans.

“We have a general kind of a working list that, even this year, we had about eight different halftime shows that we thought of, and we narrowed it down to three. So we have some already in the works that we could use down the road for next year and the year after that.” Leskowicz said

With this year coming to a close, Snyder commentated on future freshmen thinking about joining the Marching Band.

“You will find connections that you did not expect to make, and you will find people that you just work with. Something that’s really cool about marching men is that we purposefully cultivate community through our rank systems,” Snyder said. “By the end of the season, [it] make[s] for very tight friend groups. So it’s really cool to see how that impact is so big.” 

Gipe also touched on this topic.

“It’s a great way to meet a bunch of people. We start two, three weeks before school starts for our season, our rehearsals start then,” Gipe said. “You already have your own community before getting started.”

If you are interested in learning about the State High Marching Band or joining the community, click here.