Saturday, October 12, 2024

Football Counter-Programming 2024: Why don't YOU tell me what week you want it to be?


(Honestly, you're lucky to be getting anything at all.)

When I need a good old emotional release and a cathartic cry. Or when I forget and subject myself to it one more time and damn the consequences, I can turn back to the Bluecoats 2022 50th Anniversary Alumni Performance at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis.

You might wonder why--since I have only ever watched Drum Corp on VHS  or live on PBS (yep, I AM that old and that's how I did it when I was in high school) or on YouTube. Or . . . God forbid . . . the few times I'm irrationally given money to FloMarching in August.

But anyway . . . the question remains.

Why should this make me cry. I'm an interested, but removed observer of the sport. I never marched in a Drum Corp. I admittedly only became a dyed in the blue lover of the Bluecoats when I moved up to Ohio and my marching band kids reintroduced me to the group. (Though I've been a committed skeptic of the Blue Devils since the late 80s.) And, I haven't marched in a band since 1990--more precisely, Fall of 1989, unless you count an odd parade or something before June 1990s graduation.

But--as I've said before in this space--those marching band years were deeply special to me. It has been a thread through all of my blogging years. And it has come raging back in the last seven to eight years as I've watched some of my kids go through the sport and forge their own friendships and memories and emotional attachments. And I've been blessed to be allowed on that journey with them, working on the side as a volunteer. So my love of marching band and its emotional weight is strong and reinvigorated in this middle period of my life. 

So, watching an alumni corps play the hits and knowing the history behind it--leaving aside the powerful, raw beauty of the music itself--affects me.

So, yeah . . . ugly cry each and every time.


And another undeniable reason that this stuff makes me cry is the emotion that the corps members show during and at the performances conclusion. This is most evident  if you are watching a DCI championship video because what you are seeing is the catharsis of months of repetition and effort all coming together in  14 minutes of release. These kids have eaten cheap food, slept on gym floors, and relentlessly marched their drill and honed their music to a razors edge. They've been doing it through the summer for 8-10 hours every day. And then, when the competitions begin, they ride on buses across the country to perform. They get feedback, they receive judges critiques, they adapt and relearn. And it all comes together for that specific group of people on a night in Indiana in August. The thrill of achievement, the roar of appreciation from the crowds, the immediate sadness of saying goodbye to that year's corps. It all is bound up in what you see in their faces. 

How can one not react to that?

I've seen it in my kids at the high school level. Knowing the work and the pain and the stress that comes with making a show better and better for months. Seeing their surprise and delight when they get a good score or win a trophy. Feeling the sadness when they know they could have done better on a specific performance. And then seeing them do their best later and get rewarded. Watching them come together with their friends for do something together. We call our band a family and it is that in all of the best ways.

So--spend time with family today (however you define that term). And don't expect your alma mater to win that conference game against their newest hated rival that just joined the conference last year for . . . reasons.

Until next time (even if it isn't next week). Or maybe it will be?

No comments: