‘You build connection.’ Madison Southern wins the Herald-Leader’s big marching band poll.
One thing’s for certain — everything’s coming up Eagles.
Ahead of this weekend’s Kentucky Music Educators Association (KMEA) State Marching Band Championships, the Herald-Leader asked band appreciators all over Kentucky to cast their votes for the best big high school marching band in Kentucky.
Due to the unprecedented engagement of the 2023 battle of the bands poll, the Herald-Leader split this year’s edition into two based on the 2024 KMEA marching band classification. Lee County prevailed in our small band poll.
Marching band lovers cast more than 12,500 votes in the Herald-Leader’s big band poll, in which readers were allowed to vote as many times as they liked. This year, Madison Southern supporters pushed the Eagles to the top of the list by a whopping 30% margin, after not even cracking the top 15 in the 2023 poll.
Here are the top 15 finishers:
1. Madison Southern (50%).
2. Madison Central (20%).
3. Ryle (14%).
4. Dixie Heights (7%).
5. George Rogers Clark (4%).
6. Woodford County (2%).
7. Campbell County (1%).
8. Lafayette (1%).
9. Allen County-Scottsville (1%).
10. Bourbon County (less than 1%).
11. Henry Clay (less than 1%).
12. Southwestern (less than 1%).
13. Paul Laurence Dunbar (less than 1%).
14. Anderson County (less than 1%).
15. North Hardin (less than 1%).
In all, every one of the 35 schools in the poll received votes. The same was true for the 70 bands in the small band poll.
“In sports, it is a teamwork activity,” Madison Southern drum line member Caroline Hortin said, “but in marching band, since there are so many more people, you really have to use your cooperation skills and communication to really get anything working.”
The Herald-Leader spoke with Madison Southern band director Dave Ratliff and three seniors after the big band poll results were finalized to discuss what makes the Eagles’ marching band — which carries 75 members — so strong.
Hortin didn’t join the band until her sophomore year of high school, when she’d heard the program was in need of someone to play the synthesizer. Through that, she took reps on the drum line for pep band at football and basketball games.
“I just realized I really like the different beats and rhythms that the drum line incorporates,” Hortin said. “And how it’s more rhythmic. And it was really easy for me to latch onto and understand.”
One of five percussionists on the Eagles’ tight-knit drum line, Hortin said the chemistry and work ethic of the band leads to big goals, but that everybody has the dedication to work toward them.
“I would say we all have the motivation that is needed,” Hortin said, “but not always the execution that is required to accomplish our goal, which is making it to state.”
Sam Jensen, who plays the sousaphone (a beloved member of the tuba family), first joined band in the sixth grade, encouraged by his mother, who was in the marching band herself.
Jensen echoed Hortin’s point about working together as a unit and highlighted the relationships formed within the band.
“I’ve done other sports before, and you build connection with everything that you do with the people you’re around,” Jensen said. “But I haven’t built as much of a connection as I have with marching band than any other thing. Marching band has created this sense of family. It draws into a combination of people that work together, that can do great, amazing things, into performing these great, amazing things.”
Of course, those great, amazing things take a tremendous amount of time. That’s where the camaraderie, family atmosphere and motivation come in handy. Showing up in the middle of July, every single day, practicing anywhere from eight to 12 hours a day. Not only does one need to stay hydrated — folks have been known to pass out if they’re not careful — but, according to Jensen, it’s necessary to have a sense of pride in the work, too.
“You build yourself up onto the hard work that everyone’s throwing in,” Jensen said. “And after that, you’re creating a show. You have to (take pride in it). If you’re not prideful about what you’re doing, you end up with nothing good.”
So, how long does it take to create a brand-new routine?
Ratliff said Madison Southern has a team of people that collaborates to design a routine. Someone in Michigan comes up with the formation on the field, Ratliff and a teammate in Richmond put the music together while assistant director Martina Sanders and others help come up with choreography. That process, from stem to stern, “usually takes anywhere between a month-and-a-half to three months to put it together.”
But that doesn’t include the musicians themselves learning the routine to the best of their ability. That takes an additional five or six weeks.
Ratliff, now in his 19th year at Madison Southern and 30th year overall, is a former member of the marching band while he was a student at the University of Kentucky. The Pike County native recalled a memory during band camp. Ratliff was a student during the Bill Curry years of UK football, and they couldn’t believe what the Wildcat band had to do in order to become a well-oiled machine.
“They would freak out at the fact that, if football does two-a-days, that’s pretty crazy,” Ratliff said. “’But you guys are doing three-a-days for multiple weeks. That’s insane.’ … But it’s kind of a keep up with the Joneses kind of thing, where, that’s what everybody does. And if you don’t, you get left behind, competitively speaking.”
Hortin called marching band “probably the most time-consuming activity that the school has during the summer.”
“The cool thing about it is,” Ratliff said, “every year is a new batch of kids. So even though you’re still doing music, and you’re still doing band and you’re still putting on a marching band show, it’s kind of different and fresh. Each group, much like each sports team, kind of takes on a different personality, and that definitely keeps it from getting boring. It’s interesting, the older I get, it’s still a bunch of teenagers, and my assistant and I kind of laugh and joke about how it’s crazy that we’re putting our mental stability in the hands of 14- and 15-year-olds running around a football field, banging on a drum or blowing on a horn.
“So that’s what we do, because we love it, and to see the kids achieve at a high level ends up making it very much so a worthwhile activity. I think it’s the greatest activity that a kid can be a part of, and always have. I know I had a great time when I was doing it as a performer myself.”
If the commitment sounds daunting to you, imagine also having to carry all that comes with being a high school student on top of that. Ratliff, understandably, will often write a letter of recommendation for his students. He’s also, in his decades of teaching, made friends who work in local college admissions, and he said they’re happy to receive students who participated in high school band.
“They always say they love getting band kids,” Ratliff said. “Because they know that they’re going to get someone that’s good with self-discipline and good with time management, both of which you have to be good at to succeed in this game … It’s a definite life skill that we teach, beyond just the notes and the formations on the field.”
You can’t forget, either, that these students also get the opportunity to learn about and fall in love with an instrument, or, in some students’ cases, multiple instruments.
David Kenworthy plays the baritone saxophone, and has since January. But he got his start on the flute back in middle school, and proceeded to discover new interests in additional instruments.
“One of my buddies was playing bass clarinet, and I thought it sounded awesome,” Kenworthy said. “So I asked Mr. Ratliff if I could play that instead, and he said, ‘Sure,’ and let me play it. And I played it for about three years, I think, and then that same buddy switched to bari sax, and I was like, ‘Whoa.’”
Kenworthy called the baritone sax “the most fun instrument I’ve ever played,” due to the sound of it and the way it feels, but he also appreciates tackling a new instrument and learning all he can. The passion is present in the music, but he truly just loves to learn.
Sometimes, that passion can even inspire a student to pursue a career in music. Jensen said he plans to go into music education.
“I always wanted to inspire others to do something that you can do,” Jensen said. “And music is something that you can always try to see if you could do it better.”
From future music educators to musicians to lifetime music appreciators, Ratliff has only the highest praise for his students.
“It’s a very hardworking group,” Ratliff said. “Very self-disciplined and self-motivated, which is a tricky thing to do with teenagers. Teenagers having the short attention span that they do, you know, getting it to where you can get them all to try to pull towards the same goal, and to try to be able to kind of all move in the same direction is definitely tricky. So I think their self-discipline and self-motivation definitely is one of their shining moments.”
‘We’ve got to help each other.’ Lee County wins Herald-Leader small marching band poll.
