Written Aug. 31
The Marching Raiders of Central A&M High School will take the field in competition for the first time in this, the sixth season Peter Manzi has been the director of bands.
“People in the school and in the community are seeing what we’re doing and liking it, so they want to see more,” he said.
He noted it required community support to take a band program with an enrollment of 14 when he started and build one that includes 44 of the school’s 280 students today.
For example, the Lion’s Club bought a new set of marching drums for the band’s trip to Florida earlier this year, and the district sprang for new marching uniforms, he said.
To build the program, Mr Manzi started by showing videos of corps-style marching bands and traveling to marching festivals. His focus, he said, was on recruitment of underclassmen and retention of students whose interest in corps-style marching would get stronger over the years.
Although the band is only competing twice this year (Sept. 29 at the Mount Zion Music Games and Oct. 6 at Illinois Wesleyan University at the Normal West Invitational), the student leaders will be in the stands at other shows.
“The Mount Zion show will give us a chance to see where we stack up against schools that are similar to us,” he said. “At the Normal West show, we’ll be in the first class to perform, and that’ll give us the rest of the day to just sit down and watch some of the bigger schools with more established programs perform.
“It’ll give everyone the exposure of performing with other bands at festivals, because right now, they’ve never experienced anything like it.”
Central A&M High School, a name derived from the central Illinois towns of Assumption and Moweaqua, brings a marching band and a pair of ruby red slippers down the yellow brick road of competitive marching at two festivals, one small and one big, and to home football games. Mr Manzi is assisted by Lauren Ferry, Ryan Preci, and Brianna Bjerke. Somewhere over the rainbow ... there’s a land that I heard of, once in a lullaby.
