Becker High School Marching Band Returns After Years Without

BECKER (WJON News) -- The sound of music has returned to the streets of Becker for the first time in almost 10 years.  The school has restarted its Marching Band program for this summer and had its first performance on Memorial Day.

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First-year Director Justin Frerich says marching band had a big impact on him in high school so it was an easy decision to bring it back when the students asked for it:

“A lot of students this year have even brought up the fact that they really wanted this so it was more of a push from the students that just correlated with some of my personal goals of what I wanted to see built as well.”

Frerich says they are starting slow with a pretty basic approach. The kids are wearing shorts and t-shirts for their uniforms and only doing four performances. He says the band has done a lot of fundraising to pay for the uniforms, upgraded drum equipment, and color guard equipment.

He says the students have put in a ton of work and most people don’t realize how hard marching band is:

“One of the big things that is important to marching band that people don’t necessarily realize is that you have to have stamina and endurance so one of the things every practice starts either with a five minute run or I’ll give them some sort of game that works on cardio and then we do stretches just like any other sport.”

Frerich says the kids are extremely dedicated with a number of them putting in 12-hour days between school, sports practice, and then marching band practice from 6:00 to 9:00 p.m.  He says he is very proud of the students and what they have done already and looks forward to seeing them grow the band going forward.

The marching band’s next performance is Saturday at Becker’s Freedom Days, and then June 29^th at Spud Fest in Big Lake. Daisy Kent is the Grand Marshall of Freedom Days which runs through Saturday. Kent was on the latest season of The Bachelor, Click on this link for a full list of Freedom Days activities.

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