By Krystal Smalley
ksmalley@wbcowqel.com
When the whistle blew a loud, sharp note, the instruments snapped up in almost military precision. The rays of an evening sun glinted off the slide of a trombone and silvered along the line of a flute as the Buckeye Central Marching Band held at attention.
“Announcement, announcement, announcement,” band director Karla Niese yelled. The marching band was practicing on the football field and, with just three notes from the whistle around her neck, the band belted out the beginning notes on the first song of their upcoming Friday night performance.
Niese is a force to be reckoned with, according to the band members, but a much beloved force.
While her band performed a pop song on the field, Niese stood on the track keeping an eagle-eye on them. Though the band members would say that they were great because of Niese, she thought it was the other way around.
“I always tell them I can’t take the credit for it,” Niese said. “If I didn’t have these guys to work with, I wouldn’t be able to do anything. The dedication is here.”
The Buckeye Central Marching Band has posted strong numbers over the past decade but the 2015 season will be the largest Niese has ever directed in her fifteen years at the school. This year, the band, which is comprised of students from seventh to twelfth grade, has 85 members.
How is Niese able to command such strong numbers for marching band at such a small school?
“I think it’s because of the drive,” Niese said. “The kids love to be out here. They come every chance they can get during the school day; they love music.”
One thing that could possibly push that drive is the chance to create the dances for the halftime shows. Though Niese choreographed marching band dances at the beginning of her career, she has since turned those reins over to her students.
“They’re great kids. I’ve got a lot of kids involved in sports and I give a lot,” Niese explained. She tries to be flexible if a student has to leave early or shows up late because of another after school activity. “For a small school, they wear a lot of hats. I appreciate all the work that they do.”
As a band director, Niese may be a little biased on what makes marching band so special but she knows exactly why the kids do it.
“It’s the drive; it’s the adrenaline. Out underneath the lights on a Friday night – they love it; they eat it up,” Niese said.
Megan Gwirtz, a senior trumpeter, said it’s the bond created among the members that makes marching band special.
“It’s everyone working together, everyone giving 110 percent,” Gwirtz said.
“We’re like family actually,” explained senior Emma Breyley. “When you’re having a bad day and you know you’re coming to band, your mood is going to get better. Everyone is just so high energy and it’s just a great atmosphere.”
Breyley believed it was that energy that made them one of the best bands in the county.
“Not only do we have great sound, great energy, great persona,” Gwirtz said. “We love (all the other bands). We don’t have anything bad to say, either.”
Megan McGinnis, another senior who plays bells, said Niese was the one to make the band so great.
“Mrs. Niese is the bomb dot com,” McGinnis yelled. “She really puts it all together for us.”
Liberty Bradford is only in her second year in the marching band but she has already been hooked. “It’s amazing to be in the band. I wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world to be in this band.”
“It’s humbling because we started out so small and what Mrs. Niese has brought us to in just a short amount of time, it’s amazing,” said senior clarinet player Allison Stump. “When I was younger it was probably only in the 20s or something like that. So just how much improvement we’ve had in just 10 or 15 years, it’s amazing how much work she puts into it. So much work.”
As for the term band geek, Stump took it as a compliment and laid the reason for that right at Niese’s feet.
“Mrs. Niese makes it cool. We couldn’t do it without her,” Stump said.
“It really makes you proud (to be in the Buckeye Central Marching Band),” said junior baritone player Emma Studer. “You have to work hard and you just do your best. You can do so much more with a lot of people and everybody buying into the same program, making sure they’re on step, being here every night.”
“For Buckeye, it’s cool to be in the marching band,” Studer added. “Yeah, you’ve got the sports and you’ve got the music but it all blends because we all are in it all . . . Buckeye Central is a tight-knit community.”
“Usually the band, it’s a small, no one cares about thing,” Stump said. “But we are a formidable force in our community.”