Sort of Related to Football

After J's text to me last night regarding the size and afluence of TX high schools including their marching bands, I wanted to post this just for reference.  This ran in the morning news last year about the Allen band.  The numbers are quite amazing.  J's wife will appreciate it...............

Just as buffalo in unimaginable numbers once covered the plains, the Allen High School marching band covers football fields on Friday nights.  This season, the Collin County school marches 527 musicians. A 39-member color guard weaves in and out of the ranks. A 72-member drill team performs up front.
Bigger marching bands have been assembled for special events. But folks at the University Interscholastic League, the Texas Music Educators Association, Marching.com and Bands of America say they don't know of a regularly performing marching band anywhere that's the size of Allen's.  "It's the largest marching band program that I'm aware of," agreed Robert Carnochan, director of the University of Texas Longhorn Band, which has a trifling 390 members.
The Allen High marching band has about as many musicians as there are members of Congress. It has five musicians for every one in the Dallas Symphony Orchestra. The 85-member trumpet section is bigger than many high school marching bands.

The band, drill team and color guard together are formally known as the Allen Eagle Escadrille (French for "squadron"). For trips, such as last Friday's to Southern Methodist University's Ford Stadium for a game against Jesuit, the 638-student contingent requires 18 school buses. Three big trucks haul instruments and other equipment.

"The volume they produce is amazing," said Joe Nunez, director of the McKinney Boyd High marching band. "It can part your hair."  That Allen High would have a big marching band is no surprise. Allen High is one of the biggest schools in the state, reflecting rapid growth in the city as well as the school district's decision to stick with one high school. The district also is affluent, with a strong commitment to arts education.


"There's good quality in that band, not just quantity, but I don't think competition is what they're about," said Frank Coachman, deputy director of the Texas Music Educators Association. "I think they're about family, and I think that's phenomenal."
"Family" is not a metaphor, because parents are a major part of the Escadrille, handling much of the difficult logistics. At any game, nearly 100 are involved, chaperoning on buses, handing out snacks and water bottles, laying out instrument cases and carefully putting away plumes that go with marchers' hats.

The band boosters group includes a special-forces unit, the Pit Bulls. These unlikely roadies – clean-cut, middle-aged dads in special T-shirts and work gloves – move the heavy equipment, including the mallet percussion that goes in the "pit" area by the field.

The band itself certainly doesn't lack for appreciation, including from the Allen High football team. Put 500 or so rabidly partisan teenage musicians in a section near an end zone, and your team doesn't have a 12th man. It has a 12th gorilla.

Allen High is the defending state Class 5A Division I champion in football, and in last year's title game, a spectacular blast from the band coincided with miscommunication between the opposing team's center and quarterback. The ball bounced off the quarterback, who was in shotgun formation and looking the other way.  There's a video clip of that play on YouTube, and there are quite a few videos there of the Allen High band.


Members make no apology for their monster band.  "It's who we are. It's what we do," said Angela Tomlinson, a senior drum major.  The Escadrille will probably get bigger. Growth has slowed, but not stopped, in the Allen school district.  This year's band has 59 trombones. Pennington has promised that if the number gets to 76, he'll add the show tune "Seventy Six Trombones" to the repertoire.  "We're closing in," he said.  And there's still marching room – a little – in the end zones.

S