Universal Band Experience

I wasn't surprised Vickie Nowlin received strong response to her memories of Temple High School band and cheerleading. Here's a message from Nowlin's friend, Sherri, Martinez Logan, who went to school in Carnegie, Oklahoma, and now teaches music in Norman schools. It seems these are universal experiences:

Wow! Vickie that was just great! I think most schools in S.W. Oklahoma must have had a similar routine and protocol of "game night" and "the pep rally". We did. As I read it, I could visualize our Carnegie High School Wildcat band and our game format exactly as you wrote. The only difference for me was that I was one of those drummers and we KNEW we had the power to turn the air electric with our cadences and throbbing beat. Doesn't it make perfect sense that I was a percussionist?

And we in the drum core marched with a smug confidence that the rim cadence was only a foreshadow of what we were going to unleash when we went into full drum cadence. Also, remember "the round off"? That was the drum cadence introduction that followed the Drum Major's whistle for "horns up" and set the tempo to almost every march we played. (As I remember it now I still get chills.) lol And.....I can still play it and our marching cadences. lol What a silly but important memory.