I hope our football team loses every game this year. I have nothing against the players on the football team, but this year my high school hired a new football coach to try and make our football team actually good. Our football team is notoriously atrocious and won its first homecoming game in over six years. My school was so desperate to hire a football coach who was actually good that they basically promised him anything he wanted, and this is where the actual problems began. I am a part of my school’s color guard for our marching band. We were our school district’s only competitive marching band, as well as the largest and most successful program at our school. Despite this, the marching band has always had problems getting field time. Over the last five or so years, our field time has been cut down significantly. This year, however, was the most drastic when the athletic director tried to cut our field time down to a singular day that wasn’t even all weeks in our season. Marching band requires hundreds of hours on the field setting drill, repping music, and working on visuals. Last year, we had four days a week. When my older sister did marching band, they usually had every single day a week. Though I prefer having the day off of marching band, our school still received the least field time out of pretty much all competing marching bands in our state, and even some festival bands received significantly more field time than we did. This year, if we had only one day of practice a week, our band would have been reduced to a pep band, and the color guard, made up of eighteen students, would have been entirely cut. Fortunately, due to a large amount of protests in person, on social media, and on the news, we were able to receive two to three days of field time a week. This is still very little time, and we unfortunately aren’t able to compete this year. Our band is proud to say that we have gotten straight ones (the highest score bands can get at a competition) for over twenty five years straight. Our football team, in comparison, won their first game in three years last year, and their first homecoming game in over six years. The marching band is also the largest organization in our school, at over a hundred and fifteen members this year. Though this is only around five percent of our school’s total population in the band, many of us have friends outside of band who know about and support the marching band.
Our school tells us every morning to rise to the highest. How can a hundred students rise to the highest if the school refuses to allow them to actually reach for that goal? How can students do their best, when the school and the school board of our district refuses to even consider getting involved, and plays favorites with our football team? After hearing that we would only have one day of practice time over the summer, a petition was started, as well as many other things to try and raise awareness about the situation. The petition received over five thousand signatures. Many students reached out and directly messaged the athletics director, the vice principal, principal, school board president, as well as many others. We even attended a school board meeting to request that things be changed. However, the school prioritized the wishes of a football coach over five thousand voices. The unfairness and clear favoritism that has been shown for years towards the marching band as well as the rest of our art programs for years, but this year it has reached a new level. Why should one team in the school receive so much more than another? The school has tried to argue that this is a matter of money, but this makes no sense. The school almost entirely funds the football team while the marching band does not receive a dollar from the school. Instead, we fundraiser, and we work with many alumni who are willing to donate to a program that shaped their lives and made them a better person because they were a part of band. The school also said that they would be renting the field out to other fields over one of their own programs, even after an incident last year where the fields were rented out, and a person got shot at our school over a pee wee football game. Sure, the school isn’t receiving enough money. But destroying the entire season of a large group of students at our school is not the answer. If the football team actually does well this year, it will be the final nail in the coffin for the marching band. Next year, we will have even less time on the field because of the football coach’s demands, and we will not even be able to perform as a festival band. A long-standing tradition and organization at my school will be gone over night. So yes, I hope my football team does terribly, and this new “incredible” coach that they hired quits, just so I can actually continue to do the sport that I love so much. If they win a good amount of games, something I grew up watching and supporting will be gone, and I’m sure the principal at our school won’t do anything about it. He never does. Not even when it’s a matter of fairness and equity between the various parts of this school he pretends to care about equally. It is extremely frustrating, and I’m tired of pretending it’s fine or not talking about it, because color guard is such a large part of my life, and one of the things that really truly makes me happy. The school refuses to change to support all of their students, and it’s so incredibly crappy and frustrating that I can’t really describe it. I would like to make it very clear that I do not have anything against the players on the football team. Most of them aren’t bad people, and they don’t have any control over this situation. I am frustrated with my principal, the school board, and all of the fully grown adults in charge of making sure things are actually fair for everyone throughout the school. Thank you
