Set! One more time! Learn your music! Drumline be quiet. These are just some of the thing you would hear on a regular day at a band practice. Most people love the band because the musicians are always there at sporting events while having their own competitions but what really goes on behind the scenes? Music practice, marching practice, stretches, cardio exercises and long afterschool days that are consecutive. So why this activity is still considered a geeky activity rather than a sport? What band members do know is that at the end of practice, way after all sports teams have gone home, the band is worn out from everything that they do. There is so much stress on their bodies because it is physically demanding as well as mental straining because it is stressful memorizing all the drill sets and music. Marching band members do more than other sports and is proven by looking at their oxygen levels, heart rate, and calorie burn rate along with practice schedules of both football players and band members you are able to see how band should be a sport. To take that a step further definitions of sports will be challenged to see if marching band can finally get the respectable title it deserves. To choose one sport to compare marching band to for this argument will be football, one of the most watched games in America. 

There are multiple different levels or classes in both football and marching band. In football you have middle school, high school, college (in multiple divisions) and the NFL. In marching band you have middle school, high school, independent groups, indoor percussion, WGI and DCI. WGI and DCI are non-profit organizations just like the NFL (THERIDER). So they are similar in that aspect. Now if they are compared in what they do that is where it gets different. For the NFL it started back in 1920 and today has 32 teams. Although NFL does not have an age out restriction the oldest player just retired shy of his 49th birthday. The players get paid an outrages amount which is much different from band which members have to pay to continue. Some groups have to pay more than $5,000 per season. The NFL season consists of 16 regular season games then postseason with the final game being the super bowl (NFL WIKI). 

This is the player's job with all the work they do while DCI is just an activity. DCI was created in 1972 and has forty-eight corps that compete in the world championship. A performer must be under twenty-one years of age before they cannot participate. Once a person ages out they must try out for DCA which does not have an age limit but is much harder on the body and mind. For international competitors the groups are allowed to follow their own countries rules which may or may not be allowed in the North America corps. International groups include: Guatemala, Indonesia, Japan, the Netherlands, Sweden, Taiwan and the UK. The season starts in mid-June and ends on the second weekend in August. During the whole summer groups travel all around North America competing until the final World Competition in Indianapolis. (DCI WIKI).

 A few years after DCI was created WGI started in 1977. Both groups welcome more and more groups each year. There are 1,181 percussion groups that are registered to perform in any WGI competition. Showing that WGI is bigger in NFL, although a lot less people watch it, shows that an international competition should be considered a sport. Even the motto of WGI is "Sport of the arts" The world competition is held in Dayton, Ohio which has groups from all over the world. This includes but is not limited to: Japan, China, Taiwan, Netherlands, Europe, Brazil, (WGI WIKI).

A study was done to compare the physical strain on the body for marchers and compared to respected sports. The hard data actually came back shocking to most people. On game day the members of the band took an average 13,987.8  plus or minus  4,715.7 steps. While performing multiple different sensors were attached to the body and showed that the heart rate was over 300 beats per minute, the oxygen consumed was 40/mL/kg/min and a negative energy balance of 661 Kcals. Now what does that mean? The heart rate was about the same as a well-trained sprinter and the oxygen intake was the same as a professional football player. The negative energy balance suggests that even with three meals a day with snacks the strain is so much that it burns all those calories along with an extra 661 kilo calories. This increase in loss or extreme strain prepare these performers for their seven to eight minute show. Data from a marching band practice is about the same. Obviously the drumline does more work than the woodwinds because their instrument is heavier. This is why WGI and DCI are more extreme since they only include drumline and brass instruments. 

On performance day band members wake up at 5 a.m. to get to their meeting location at 6 a.m. When they get there they load the semi-truck with instruments, uniforms, extra replacement parts if anything breaks and props to make their show more impactful to the audience and judges. Once everything is loaded members climb onto busses that transport them to the performance location. DCI members travel the whole United States for the whole summer so many bus rides are multiple days with practices in between. After the truck is unpacked, uniforms are put on, make up/ face paint is applied the band starts to warm up. If you are a spectator you can either wait in the coliseum to watch many different groups perform or you can wander the parking lot to watch everyone at once. A band gets set warm up time in the parking lot before they have to push all the equipment to the staging area where they get 15 minutes of practice while waiting for the previous band to finish. When the band gets set and ready to play the stadium is as quiet enough to hear a pen drop before they start playing. During the show fans yell and scream when they do something amazing. Judges also wander the field looking for errors with the band to deduct points. On the final note of their performance the band gives everything they have to make that last impression then rushes off the field so they do not get time penalties. The scores are not posted until all bands in certain classes finish. Right after the show is done the group rests for a few hours, being careful not to eat junk food, for their finals performance. Many groups are eliminated between prelims and finals. 

In certain schools kids are given the opportunity to take marching band class to count as their physical education class. Although this is just high school classes while earlier NFL and WGI were compared it still shows that marching band is considered an intensive sport. TheRiderOnline, which wrote about the physical education credit, goes on to talk about how sports are defined as "any activity involving physical exertion and skill governed by a set of rules or customs and often undertaken competitively". Now that may be true but when looking at the definition of a sport from Wikipedia it says a sport has "an element of competition, be in no way harmful to any living creature, not rely on equipment provided by a single supplier (excluding proprietary games such as arena football) and not rely on any "luck" element specifically designed into the sport" (WIKI SPORT). Marching band and indoor drumline have competitions. The only living creature it may harm would be the person with sun burns and worn feet. Musical instruments can be provided by the school, instrument shop/rental place or bought by the student. There is not luck when practicing there is only repetitive beats that seem to go on forever until you can perfect it. So by the definition that was derived from the Webster dictionary states that marching band should be considered a sport. 

I interviewed many people at Dorman High School when I went to go watch my brother perform his show and what I found was very interesting. Some of the questions I asked went along the lines of: Do you think indoor is a sport? How often do people practice a week? Do the kids enjoy it? How much do you pay? How many competitions are there? There were so many different answers I cannot just quote one person. So I will give a good overview. Most people did think indoor should be considered a sport or already consider it one. I asked why and they said the amount of time the kids put into this program along with the physical and mental capacities they have (which the parents were proud of) is outrageous. Many groups practice 3 or more times a week with 3 hour practices. That is over 15 hours a week of practice time. This does not include class time that they practice, outside practice and if the time allotted goes over, which the parents said is almost every day. Sometimes on competition days they meet at 6 a.m. to start practice early before they load the busses and perform. Then once they get to the parking lot they practice more. Even with all the hours the kids say they would never want to give it up. This is my problem now. I would love to be a part of a group but I cannot because I am writing this paper when I could be doing that. Time flies when you are having fun and these kids have no idea what they will miss when they leave. 

When I asked around the parking lot about how much a group can cost to join it varies between $550 and $2,000. Now the lower end of that spectrum would be the high school groups that have funding from the school while the kids pay the difference to make the show happen. The higher end would be for independent groups that do not have sponsorships or big funders. Now if each groups member would pay $2,000 in a forty person group that would amount to $80,000 just to do BAND for a few months. In this price though you get a new tarp, new uniforms, new instruments (sometimes), music writers, visual writer, busses, travel expenses, tickets for the kids, salary for the staff, and props. Now buying all of that can eat up the money very fast that is why groups have to fundraise or maybe even pay more to get the show off the ground to hopefully get first place. 

Each competition is very different in small cases but usually set up in the same way. During one season a group could go to as many as nine shows with the final one in Dayton, Ohio or could just stay local and do four shows. When the group gets there they unpack, practice then perform. But that is not really all that happens. The kids interact with one another and become even closer friends. My roommate currently and will be in the future is one of my friends from drumline. Now we did not talk that much while in the program because he was in the battery while I was in the pit but friendships and meeting future best friends can happen through this group. I can proudly say I had a great set of friends that got me through high school along with great instructors. 

Finally, I went to a football game here at Carolina. Everyone was having a great time, screaming, partying and everything. I do not have a problem with that at all but not knowing all the players and only watching two teams battle for hours can get boring. Now I am not saying that to offend anyone but in drumline you know each group before they even perform. You know their show concept because you watched them perform. On WGI's website they have videos with hundreds of thousands of view all over the world. There is such a big fan base, not as big as other sports, but there is one out there. With all of this data about how performers working just as hard or even harder than other sports group I think it is amazing that marching band or even WGI/DCI is no considered a sport. 

Many people will never consider music to be a sport and I respect that side of the argument but you cannot go against it until you step onto that field and look up at the crowd getting ready to perform your heart out for your parents and many fans. The rush of fear cannot overwhelm you because you yourself are responsible for the groups score and you do not want to disappoint your best friends that are all over the field. Next time you are watching the half time show for a football game or just listening to the band for the basketball team consider how much time they put in for all of it and please respect them because it does take a lot of work for them to entertain you. 

