As fall approaches, everyone is preparing to see Friday nights stadium lights aglow. It is not just the high school football teams that are practicing.
Many cheerleaders and band members throughout St. Clair County have been practicing hard all summer getting ready for the football games that begin in late August.
Brad Sargent, the band director at Moody High School for the past three years, is currently leading his band students through a “summer band rehearsal” meeting periodically throughout the summer before he starts fulltime band camp.
“I do this so the students are able to prepare their music in advance of band camp,” Sargent said. “I have found that it is extremely important to get a head start on the music before band camp.
“Any band instrument is really unforgiving. If you take time away from it, then you have to spend time trying to gain the skills that you’ve lost. Maintaining those skills that we’ve worked so hard to achieve is very important.”
Sargent encourages adults, especially band parents, to “Invest in the Blue.”
“It is an opportunity to not only support the band, but to be able to invest in the lives of individual students through music,” Sargent said. “Donations will help to educate our students in the fine art of music. Students can develop their talents, skills, individual leadership, and work as a team in the Moody Blue Devil Band program.”
Sargent said these funds will help pay for band camp, section training, food and water, transportation, music, props, all marching band expenses, concert and competition fees, uniform upkeep, needed band instruments and all other expenses needed to present quality showmanship.
One band parent in her first year with the band boosters is Lynn Sherrer. She and her husband, Stanley, have a son, Alex, who is a freshman at Moody High. It is his second year in the band, but this will be his first year to march.
“I wanted to join the band boosters,” Sherrer said. “I am proud to be a booster. I want to do anything I possibly can to help the kids.”
Sherrer said it was very important for Alex to be in the band.
“He could have been a football player, but doesn’t want to be,” she said. “He has a black-belt in karate, but he wanted to join the band. That’s what he is doing.”
Alex plays the trombone, an instrument he has been playing for two years.
“Everyone I have met so far that is affiliated with the band is nice and very supportive of the kids,” she said. “That is the most important thing to me. I hate that we have to do ‘all’ the fundraising, but it’s part of it.”
