While most students enjoy sleeping in and soaking up summer, Patrick Henry High School marching band members are already hard at work practicing under the hot sun.
From early morning drills to afternoon rehearsals, students spend several hours a day marching, memorizing music, and enduring the heat.
“Yeah, it’s hot, it’s hot,” one student said.
Though they may not be scoring touchdowns, the field is their stage for the season.
“These kids are athletes, too. Could these kids play middle linebacker? Probably not. Could the middle linebacker march with a tuba for eight minutes playing all the right notes? Probably not,” said Alex Schmitt, band teacher at Patrick Henry High School.
To cope with the heat, the band takes quick water breaks, uses cool towels, and even enjoys popsicles as rewards.
“This week is definitely getting hotter, so we’re trying to get water breaks every 10 to 15 minutes—even if it’s just what we call a ‘gush and go,’ where we run off the field, get some water, and get back so we’re not missing much rehearsal time,” said Becky Vilelle, Drum Major.
The hard work goes beyond marching.
“We do like 30 minutes of PT every morning which we call physical training, so we will take a nice little jog around PH, then we will work out, do some core, some arms, do some calf strength for our marching and then some cardio time around the track then we come out here and outside time and marching and playing and it’s all so much,” said Becky, a band member.
For the Marching Patriots at Patrick Henry, every day counts.
“So, this is the beginning of our second week of summer rehearsals. We started the beginning of last week and it just takes a long time to be great at something, you know, and we want to be great,” Schmitt said.
Their hard work leads to one goal: their first performance just weeks away under the Friday night lights at the end of August, followed by a season of competitions.