UW band members return to play at Snohomish High

Published 10:48 pm Saturday, September 22, 2007

SNOHOMISH — Martha Chan clutched her piccolo, running in place, almost bouncing on the edge of the football field at Snohomish High School.

A thunderous drum roll filled the night sky, and Chan raced onto the field amid a sea of purple and gold, drawing roaring applause from the packed bleachers.

Chan, a member of the University of Washington marching band, was one of three former Snohomish High students who returned to their home turf Friday night to perform as Huskies. The UW band played at halftime during the Snohomish and Oak Harbor football game.

“It will be fun to march in the place where we learned how to march,” said Chan, a college freshman, just before the performance.

Former Panthers Anthony Squires, a sophomore trumpet player, and Chris Lennard, a junior snare drummer, are also members of the Huskies marching band.

“I was in a band the entire time I was here, and now I’m going back to play in front of them, and maybe convince a few of them to join the Husky band,” Squires said.

UW band director Brad McDavid was at Snohomish High earlier this year for a district band competition, in which he was a judge. He was eating lunch with Snohomish Band Director Peter Wilson when he made an offer Wilson couldn’t refuse.

“He said, ‘Would you like us to come here?’” Wilson said. “I said, ‘Sure.’”

The Huskies came with a small price – they asked for bus fare and a spaghetti dinner.

Local businesses and residents donated more than $1,000 and all the necessary food to bring the purple and gold band up to Panther territory.

“I know they are all looking for a meal now that I have a college student of my own,” Snohomish Band Booster President Becky Thiele said with a laugh.

Large-scale planning is part of being a band booster club. Making a meal for roughly 300 college students is a lot simpler than raising money to send the high school band to perform in Florida next spring.

A small army of volunteers turned 60 pounds of dry noodles and five giant cans of sauce into a feast.

The extra duty was fine with the boosters, Thiele said.

“It didn’t take any convincing at all,” she said. “I think this is exciting for the whole town.”

Not to mention a wonderful learning experience for the younger students, Wilson said.

“You get to see that next level of intensity,” Wilson said. “It’s cool to watch, it’s cool to be a part of.”

The UW marching band performs at one high school football game each year, usually when the Huskies football team travels to road games in the Pacific Northwest.

Some of the students who performed at Snohomish on Friday had to be at the university at 4:30 a.m. Saturday. They had to fly to Los Angeles, where the Dawgs played the UCLA Bruins on Saturday.

“It’s just a tradition we’d like to continue, to reach out to high schools in the Pacific Northwest and spread a little Husky fever,” McDavid said.

Lennard, the SHS alum and UW snare drummer studying musical performance and music education, came back last summer to work with the SHS drum line.

He said he wishes the UW band would have played in Snohomish when he was a student.

“A lot of people would have been very inspired to continue with their music,” he said.

The UW band performed its own routine, but the SHS band got to join them for a rousing version of Santana’s “Everybody’s Everything” with Wilson directing atop a 14-foot ladder. Together the bands covered 50 yards of the field sideline to sideline.

“It went absolutely great,” Wilson said. “The stadium was packed.”

Anna Chlebowski, a senior in the Snohomish High band, wants to play her clarinet in the Western Washington University band after she graduates.

She was amazed by the Huskies’ halftime performance.

“It’s just really high energy, and it makes everyone want to get involved and get hyped up,” Chlebowski said.

Getting to be part of it is an experience Karlie Kennedy, 17, third bass in the drum line, won’t soon forget.

“Just watching them dance around just made you want to dance with them,” she said. “It was pretty crazy.”