The University of Illinois Marching Illini provide the soundtrack for a long list of cherished football traditions. Gridiron games wouldn’t be nearly as much fun without the band leading the players out of the tunnel, playing “Imperial March” from “Star Wars” on third downs and of course “Oskee Wow Wow” after every touchdown. But the band is abandoning one lesser-known custom that dates back several generations – and everyone is happy to see this tradition go.
Though it’s not apparent in their performances, the Marching Illini have never had a good place to practice. Unlike other Big Ten bands with dedicated practice areas, the Marching Illini have been vagabonds, moving from one open field to another – a grassy patch by the Stock Pavilion, a lot near State Farm Center, a field by Memorial Stadium now used for tailgating or the meadow behind the Business Instructional Facility. On each of these borrowed plots, the band got by with a few leased lights, a couple of scissor lifts and yard lines painted on the grass. None of these fields had perfect topography to begin with, and the tromping of 360 pairs of feet made the ground dangerously uneven.
Beginning this summer, however, the Marching Illini will have their own permanent practice field, complete with durable synthetic turf, lights for dusky rehearsal hours and a two-story observation tower in the shape of the Block I.
Ask Marching Illini drum major Liv Harmening, how excited the band is, on a scale of 1-10, about this new field, and she answers, “Oh, at least a 14!”
Like most band members, Harmening, a senior from Orland Park, Ill., can tell horror stories of previous impermanent practice plots. “During my freshman year, we had to cancel rehearsals because the grass on the South Quad was so beat up that when we marched, we created a dust storm,” she said. The dust got into the musicians’ eyes, mouths and instruments.
Ilona Widomska, who served as drum major for two years and will graduate in May, had a similarly rocky freshman season, spraining her ankle on a practice field. “I was doing our run-on step, which involves running onto the field as part of our pre-game show,” said Widomska, from Mount Prospect, Ill. “The field was bumpy and the grass was long, and it caused me to trip and roll my ankle.”
Barry Houser, the director of the Marching Illini and of U. of I.’s athletic bands, said such injuries weren’t uncommon.
“For a band program that can be traced back to 1868 – the second year this university existed – it’s amazing that we’ve dealt with this problem for so long,” he said. “It’s been pretty subpar for where we should be with a program like this.”
Ideally, the practice field should be a place that helps the band fulfill its mission of creating a new show for each home football game. To accomplish that, band members need to memorize complex maneuvers, with each musician hitting his or her assigned spot on the field. They often look for “landmarks” to ensure they’re in the right place, but the old practice fields provided the wrong kind of landmarks – holes.
“After a couple of days of preseason camp, you could know your spot on the field just by looking for the divot,” said Ben Wooley, an engineering major from Oswego, Ill., who plays cymbals in the band. “The lights were somewhat helpful, but by the time the sun went down, it was difficult to see yard lines on the field.”
As each football season progressed and night fell earlier, lighting became more of an issue. If a show needed extra work, or if Houser wanted the band to run through something just once more, the musicians might find themselves marching in the dark.
“There have been a lot of rehearsals where we’re struggling through,” Harmening said, “wondering how we’re going to get this show together by Saturday, and we would have to cut it short just because of light. Imperfect conditions make it more frustrating to not be able to give everything we’ve got, just because of elements that are out of our control.”
The new practice field, she said, will be “oh holy cow leaps and bounds more helpful.” Not only will it have better lighting, but it will also replicate the Memorial Stadium turf, right down to the Block I and outline of the state of Illinois on the 50-yard line.
Houser said the practice field problem came to the attention of university officials after band alumni circulated a petition during the drought of 2012. When Facilities and Services personnel inspected the band’s practice field on the South Quad that summer, they found the grass dead and the soil so compacted that it could not be aerated, Houser said. The band was told to avoid using that field for the next two years. But any field the band used would inevitably suffer a similar fate.
“Big Ten bands do a lot of high chair (stepping with knees lifted hip-high), fast chair and run-on steps,” he said. “Just with the mass of people and the style of marching that we do, we kill everything that grows.”
The solution to the band’s quest for a practice field emerged from an unlikely alliance involving two campus units unrelated to music or football.
University Housing, in the process of constructing new residence halls, needed to build a retention pond to solve drainage issues near the “Six Pack,” and proposed submerging two of the grass fields in the “play field” multiplex at the corner of First Street and Gregory Drive in Champaign. But Robyn Deterding, the director of Campus Recreation, didn’t want to lose those fields.
“Those fields are used by everything from flag football to soccer to lacrosse,” she said. “We put so much use on those fields that by the end of the fall semester, they’re down to dirt and we can’t use them again until the next fall.”
Housing offered to construct an underground drainage pond, which would allow synthetic turf fields to be built on top, but Campus Recreation would have to pay the extra cost. Deterding discovered a way to fund the fields when she attended a meeting with other Big Ten recreation directors.
“Michigan State and Ohio State talked about this collaborative effort where their marching bands practice on their turf fields, and the bands pay for maintenance,” she said. “So I proposed to Fine and Applied Arts that we let the band use our turf fields in exchange for some financial assistance.” All parties agreed, and the U. of I. Board of Trustees approved the plan last summer.
“Can the stars align any better?” Houser asked. “Housing still gets their retention pond, Campus Rec gets their field and everyone comes out smiling.”
The band members may be smiling bigger than anyone else. Benjamin Harrison, a junior music education major from Buffalo Grove, Ill., who will be a music section leader in the trumpet section in the fall, said he’s excited about being able to focus on music and maneuvers instead of bumps and divots.
“Those things are really distracting,” he said. “The biggest thing I’m looking forward to is that we won’t have to worry about our safety.”
Harmening, the drum major, said that the simple joy of “being able to trust the ground we’re standing on” will free the Marching Illini to fine-tune their shows. The upcoming season will be her fifth and final year with the band, and she is thrilled to get to experience the new practice field: “I cannot wait for this fall!”