VENICE (SNN TV) – If you want to know what makes the Venice High Marching Indians exciting, co-drum major Cole Duncan can tell you.
“It’s just an awesome experience to be able go on the football field, like the lights coming on you, and then to play that show out there,” Duncan says.
And contrary to popular belief, the time commitment isn’t terrible.
“Mondays and Wednesdays aren’t marching band days, so you have time to do your homework and get it done,” says Duncan.
But if you want to know how much the program truly touches a student, you might have to go to a senior like co-drum major Faith Henry. She’s been through it all – her freshman year in 2019, the socially distanced COVID performances in 2020, a return to normalcy in 2021, and now her final year, and the realization that the marching band years are marching away.
I asked her how it was having her last “first show” of her senior season.
“Very emotional. I did not expect to cry but I totally did. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t. It’s okay. I mean it was happy tears, kind of sad tears, but it’s okay. I’m very grateful and blessed to be where I am now,” Henry says.
“I can only imagine you’re [crying] because it’s meant something to you,” I told her.
“It means everything to me,” she says.
This final year for Faith is year 3 for band director David Wing. At the spring band banquet in 2022, their fall halftime show was revealed — their spy-themed ‘Your Mission, Should You Choose To Accept It,’ halftime show, where you can hear Secret Agent Man, or the sounds of Skyfall. That initially seemed like a weird inclusion to Faith, in part because she had never seen the movie of the same name.
“I did not think I’d like it. I did not think it would go with the show at all, but I love it. That’s my absolute favorite movement.”
Since returning from a limited 2020 football season, they scored nearly straight superiors, the highest score possible, in their annual marching assessment, and straight superiors for their wind ensemble and jazz band in their yearly assessments last spring. So what’s the expectation this year?
“We’re gonna get straight superiors. I feel it coming. I feel it in the air. Straight superior season, I’m so excited,” Duncan says.
And if mistakes are made?
“Most people really don’t know if we make a mistake because we get good at it, and then we’re like okay, we’ve got to get back on time and we’ve got get it right,” says Duncan.
‘So don’t make a mistake and then throw your horn on the ground, drop to your knees and shout at the heavens?” I ask.
“No, don’t do that,” Duncan laughs.
As an online bonus clip, I asked Duncan what’s going to happen if Venice doesn’t get straight superiors at their yearly assessment.