This upcoming school year, DHS marching band will make changes to the drum major position. As of next year, there will be a policy in place restricting band members who participate in the football, cheer or dance teams from becoming drum majors.

Drum major and junior Zach Yarbrough believes that the new rule will improve the efficiency of the band.  

“I like the idea. I think that it is actually very hard to logistically operate when you are missing a key component of your band,” Yarbrough said.

The marching season, which starts in late summer and concludes at the end of October, is at the same time as many other time consuming school activities. This causes juggling both activities to become more difficult for drum majors to do.

Band teacher Matt Bradford believes that this new policy will help the band improve by having drum majors who can be up in the stands with the band.

“The problem is that it limits us if they are [in other activities] and we have to be careful who we choose. And now [with this rule] if we just had them as the drum major, then it would fix that issue,” Bradford said.

This year, there are four drum majors: Liza Elwell (senior), Evan Sullivan (senior), Ryan Wollum (senior) and Yarbrough.

One of the current drum majors, Sullivan, is involved in varsity football and is unable to conduct in the stands during football games.

Bradford took Sullivan’s involvement in football into consideration this year before he was selected as drum major.

“We took him playing football into account when we were thinking about how many people we needed on the field,” Bradford said.

With one of the four drum majors being on the football team, the band has found their way adapting and working through the differences in leadership.

“It works out fine, because when Evan plays football we have three drum majors and three songs, but it does make decision making a little bit harder. This is because when we go to festivals, a lot of things change and it kind of confuses the band,” Yarbrough said.  “It’s not the end of the world, but it will become easier in the future.”

DHS band will put this new regulation into place for next year’s drum major selection process.

“[The new rule] might take someone out of the running, but they’d still be able to be in band,” Bradford said.

The DHS band will continue to play throughout this season with their four drum majors, but in the coming years, band members will benefit from the drum majors being available during games.