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 Marching with the “finest small college band in the land” at the College of Wooster in Ohio By CHUCK OFFENBURGER October 22, 2008 WOOSTER, OHIO They call it “The Finest Small College Band in the Land,” and I’ve sure never seen or heard one better.
I’ve seen the Big 10. I’ve seen the Big 12. I’ve seen the SEC. I’ve seen the Pac 10. Wooster is more fun. And it’s a $5 admission ticket. Specifically, you’ve never seen a marching band and a football team playing so well off each other as here. “You know, in a lot of colleges and high schools across the country, the kids in the band are kind of ignored or looked-down-on, called the ‘band geeks’ and all that,” said Wooster band director Nancy Ditmer, 58, in her 25th year at the school. “Not here. Our kids, when they come in new, are blown away at the acceptance the band has on campus, and by how band members are looked-up-to here. “And we have just a great relationship with our football coaches and players. I got a note Monday morning from our head coach, Mike Schmitz, thanking us for our Homecoming performance. The football players – in fact all the athletes on campus – all know me by name and know most of our band members, too. There’s a lot of respect, back and forth. And in a couple of weeks when we have our annual marching band concert, Coach Schmitz will come over and conduct the band doing the fight song, ‘Black & Gold’ during the concert.” On football Saturdays, the band gathers three hours before kickoff to warm-up in and outside of Scheide Music Center. Thirty minutes before game time, they form up in an alley, then march a loop through campus, with Wooster fans lining the streets and sidewalks along the way to watch, listen and cheer them along their way. The band marches down a hillside of a natural bowl into the football stadium, plays a pre-game show and then forms a “tunnel” out on the field. Then the bagpipers go back to the hilltop to lead the Fighting Scots football team down to do battle. When the game ends, the pipers and drums circle the team huddle on the field, for another round of “Scotland the Brave” and then the team boisterously sings “Black & Gold.” If you love bands, and especially marching bands, it’s a thrill seeing a program like this thriving at a small liberal arts college like Wooster, which has an enrollment of 1,800 and competes in the NCAA’s Division III sports. Most small colleges across the country have dropped their marching band programs, bowing to rising costs for equipment, uniforms and transportation. I think the only marching band left at a private college or university in Iowa is at Drake University in Des Moines, but that’s a NCAA Division I school in all sports except football. Wooster is the only college in its North Coast Athletic Conference that still has a marching band, and Ditmer says among Ohio’s “38 or 39 private colleges, only five of us have marching bands – Ohio Northern, Otterbein, Mount Union, Malone and Wooster.” She continued that “the main reason for schools not having marching bands is because it’s so darned expensive to start and maintain one. It’s a very expensive endeavor. One college in Ohio was getting a big donation if they’d start a marching band, and they were asking me what the costs would be. I did some figuring, and I think the bare minimum start-up cost now would be $350,000 – for your instruments, uniforms and other equipment – and it’d be significantly more if you add travel.” She said the Marching Scots used to do one away football game each season, but they’ve given that up because of the costs of transportation. “As our band has grown, we’ve now reached the point where it takes three buses to move us,” Ditmer said. “It’s roughly $1,000 per bus, so it gets expensive in a hurry. Now, the one trip we do every fall is to go to a high school band festival in the area here where we are the guest performers. We love doing that, and one reason is that we’re playing for 1,000 or more prospective students.” She said there is no separate Wooster marching band budget, “but it’d probably be $40,000 a year, and that’s not counting staff salaries, since we’re paid for our work in the Music Department.” She said they spend $10,000 each year from an endowed fund to upgrade uniforms. So how has Wooster’s marching band program stayed so strong?
When she was at Iowa, she was a graduate assistant with the Hawkeye Marching Band. “I’m an Ohio native, and did my undergraduate work at Capital University in Columbus here,” Ditmer said. “Then I started teaching in public schools in Ohio, and I got to know Myron Welch, who was director of bands at Wright State University in Dayton. He moved on to become director of bands at Iowa, and that’s why I wound up going there, too. I did two years with the marching band, and then a year with the music education program. I got my master’s at Iowa, and I did everything toward my doctorate except my dissertation.” There is a lot of the Hawkeye band’s style and sound in the Wooster band, even now, 25 years later. In addition to the traditional Wooster songs, the Marching Scots also do a lot of new arrangements of old rock ’n’ roll songs – pieces by such rockers as Santana, Ozzy Osbourne, Van Halen, Aerosmith, AC/DC, Nirvana and Bon Jovi. In fact, a number of the arrangements in the Wooster band’s “rock” repertoire have been done by David Woodley, who now is an Indiana University professor of music and director of the “Marching Hundred” in football season and the Big Red Basketball Band. When Ditmer was a graduate assistant at Iowa, Woodley, who grew up in Winterset in central Iowa, was the drum major in the Hawkeye Marching Band. “I had heard of the Wooster band and their tradition many years ago,” Woodley told me this week, “and I’m very happy to see that tradition continue. In an athletic world where bands are squeezed out quite often by marketing guys who don’t understand tradition, it’s great that a band like theirs can continue at a high level of performance and interest, and remain strong. “I have always wanted to hear the Wooster band, since I have from time to time provided some music for them,” Woodley continued. “Playing Ozzy Osbourne in a kilt must be a hoot!” In 1984, when Ling was retiring at Wooster, Ditmer decided to apply. “It seemed to be a good fit for me, because I’m an Ohio person and I come from a family that has a long history in private higher education,” she said. “I was somewhat concerned about following a legend, of course. But the position was ‘director of bands and coordinator of music education’ – and it was a rare opportunity to work in both areas that I’d done my graduate work in. So here I came, a 34-year-old replacing a 66-year-old. I did it the way I’ve always taken on challenges in my life – I jumped in head-first and did what I needed to do with as much zeal and enthusiasm as I could. “I think the stars were lined up just right for all that, because the transition was much easier than I expected it to be,” Ditmer continued. “I was blessed with a large group of freshmen students that year, and the band almost doubled in size between Stuart’s last year and my first one. I put 82 people on the field that first year, and people were really excited – both at the college and in the community. We created a lot of ‘buzz’ about the band that year.” All students can be in the marching band – you only have to audition to be in the college’s symphonic band – and Ditmer has seen it grow as large as 180 members. “I was on sabbatical last year, so I didn’t get to talk to as many prospective students as I normally do,” she said. “That’s why we’re down to 152 this fall, but the truth is, 180 people really gets to be too many. About 160 to 170 seem just right for us here.” Of course, everyone wonders about how difficult it must be to persuade young collegians – especially the men – that wearing a kilt can be an O.K. thing. “I did worry at first that it would be hard to sell young men on the idea of wearing a kilt,” Ditmer said, “but it’s turned out to be quite the opposite. First, the kids learn about the tradition – that the Wooster band has been wearing the Scottish uniforms since about 1940, and it’s our heritage. Second, everybody seems to like the idea that this is not just like the band uniform you wore back in high school – it’s something different and unique.” Brett Dawson, a sophomore who played tenor sax in his first year but is now one of three drum majors with the Marching Scots, said all the band’s traditions “are an easy sell to prospective students. I know when I looked here, I loved that the entire school is just surrounded by tradition. “But the uniforms are a different question, at least at first. They take a little breaking-in, just because most guys aren’t used to having something on that’s so like a skirt. After the first game, though, putting on the kilt becomes second nature to most. I’ve actually grown to love the kilt.” Ditto, says Andy Gress, a senior who is the band president in addition to being the tuba section leader. “When I first saw the uniform, I was unsure of what to think,” Gress said. “Having been a Boy Scout for the majority of my life, the high socks weren’t a real issue. The hardest part to adjust to in the uniform was in fact the ‘sporran,’ which hangs in front of you and helps keep the kilt closed. In all honestly, after wearing a kilt for five minutes, I realized it was quite comfortable and have since then considered purchasing one for myself.” Wearing your own kilt around, say, Cleveland or Chicago or New York in years to come, would sure be an easy way to provide an answer to the question, “Are you from Wooster?”  You can write the columnist at chuck@Offenburger.com.
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