Bands become more than just music to basketball fans' ears

The 3A basketball tournaments are in Seattle this week and I'm looking forward to the bands almost as much as the basketball.

With me and bands, it's the case of someone who can barely jump over an envelope admiring people who can dunk. When I was in junior high, the band teacher wrote my parents and said, "I would be glad to continue with your son but frankly he lacks aptitude and ability." That was when I was trying drums after failing at trumpet.

I quit, but just because you're inept at making music doesn't mean you can't enjoy it. There are a lot of students at Duke and North Carolina who can barely make a free throw but love basketball.

So, with the tournaments headed to town this week, I talked to musicians, band directors and Bruce Caldwell, executive manager of the Washington Music Educators Association, about high-school bands. Here are some of the things I learned or relearned:

• Certain personality types gravitate to certain instruments. For example, outgoing personalities usually are found playing trumpets or percussion instruments such as drums.

• Band directors will select music with strengths of the band in mind just as coaches will design plays to get their best players the ball. Kentridge has a gifted electric guitar player, Jonathan Dong, and turned him loose last Thursday with Carlos Santana's "Oye Como Va."

• Musicians get the same satisfaction of teamwork as athletes. "If everyone plays well and a song sounds great, it's the same feeling in the band as on the basketball court if you and your teammates perform all the cuts and screens perfectly on a play and your team scores," explained Meghan Miller (Roosevelt '01), who played trumpet and three sports and now helps coach the Roughriders girls basketball team.

• Bands are always eager to hear how the opponent's band sounds. Normal competitive juices flow, but there also is appreciation for talent.

• Being the No. 1 musician on an instrument at schools with good music reputations carries the same cache in music circles that being the starting point guard at Rainier Beach does in basketball circles.

• Some band directors play an instrument with the band. Kentridge's David Baldock plays trumpet. "I enjoy it," he explained. It also provides extra incentive for the student musicians to play well. It reminds me of how a good basketball player makes everyone around him or her better.

• The bands that appear at state-tournament basketball games are usually "pep bands" and aren't as big as the school's band that perform in parades or at football games.

• An issue is how many home games at which the band should perform. This has been a national issue among educators and the general standard is that 10 appearances (excluding state tournaments) is the maximum in any sports season.

• Just like sports practices, band practices aren't always fun. Musicians work on fundamentals, go repeatedly over difficult parts of songs, listen to how the other instruments sound in relation to their instrument group and make adjustments.

• Unlike the games themselves where some players never get off the bench, everybody in a band gets to play.

Q: Are you aware that about 35 top high-school boy soccer players in the area aren't competing for their high schools this spring because they are in an elite program run by Crossfire Premier Soccer Club?

A: Yes. We'll hear more about this controversy as the season continues. Crossfire has U-16 and U-18 teams in the new U.S. Soccer Development Academy program under the U.S. Soccer Federation.

Crossfire, which practices four times a week, took two months off in the winter and is playing a spring schedule against other Western U.S. teams. Crossfire told players they had to choose between school teams or the Academy teams.

The other Washington club in the national program, Washington Premier Football Club of Tacoma, played in the winter and is taking its break now and is allowing its players to play high-school soccer.

Have a question about high-school sports? Craig Smith will find the answer every Tuesday in The Times. Ask your question in one of the following ways: Voice mail (206-464-8279), snail mail (Craig Smith, Seattle Times Sports, P.O. Box 70, Seattle, WA 98111) or e-mail csmith@seattletimes.com