Orcutt Musician Athletes Go For The Gold Medal!

Hi, it’s Marcus C from Orcutt Academy High School (OAHS) representing myself, Vincent G, Phoebe S, Jordan D, Will C, and OAHS alumnus, Alan C. On behalf of us OAHS students accepted into three Corps of the Drum & Bugle Corps, we are asking for your help in reaching our goals. We are trying to raise $49,142 to help us as musician athletes obtain the Gold Medal in the World Championships of Drum & Bugle Corps.

OUR STORY

We are six Orcutt locals who have all been educated in the Orcutt Union School District and now will be representing Orcutt California on the World Stage. We are at the pinnacle of arts education for our age. We are incredibly excited to share that all of us auditioned for Drum Corps International bands (www.dci.org) where we earned coveted spots and were offered contracts, which we recently accepted! Vincent, Phoebe, Jordan and I, are with Gold Drum & Bugle Corps out of San Diego, California. Alan is with Pacific Crest Drum & Bugle Corps in Diamond Bar, California, and Will is with Blue Stars Drum & Bugle Corps in Wisconsin. We have all pushed ourselves to be better musicians and worked hard to get where we are now. Last year, we took home the Silver Medal in the Open Class World Championships for Gold & Drum Bugle Corps; that's our past Orcutt crew from last year as the cover photo on this page. You can watch our 2022 award-winning performance here: https://youtu.be/ReBSmlVnPgM

This year we will be competing as musician athletes on the World Stage trying to reach the Gold Medal! We need your help. Please read on.

WHAT IS DRUM & BUGLE CORPS?

Drum Corps International is MARCHING MUSIC'S MAJOR LEAGUE™. Drum Corps is "a musical marching unit consisting of brass instruments, percussion instruments and color guard. Drum corps are specialized marching bands that typically operate as independent organizations (no scholastic affiliation), performing in on-field competitions, parades, festivals and other civic functions. The rules of Drum Corps International set the age limit, with most participants aged 17-21. Competitive Drum Corps take part in a summer tour that visits various cities around the country and participates in competitions on football fields around the nation. Every year, each drum corps prepares a single show, approximately 8–12 minutes in length, and carefully refines this throughout the entire summer tour. This focuses on a single show, which takes advantage of a large amount of time, needed to hone and refine a modern drum corps program with a momentum that continues to build toward the last performance of the season – championships."

Drum Corps is a very intense activity. We practice choreography and drill formations along with refining our music. Indeed, physiology research has shown that a DCI musician athlete’s heart rate “can remain steadily high, at about 200 beats per minute. That’s the same as the heart rate of an athlete running a 400-800 meter dash. The individual’s VO2 max (maximal oxygen uptake, which measures how much oxygen can be processed and used by the body during vigorous exercise) varied, and when performing, [our] heart rates are equivalent to a well-trained athlete in the middle of the marathon.” Our work is vigorous itself. We march with a precise pace as we make sudden and swift movements to change direction for drill and choreography all while marching; we must all exist on the same beat. Everyone on a professional-size football field must look to a drum major for tempo, even if you are hearing sound from a full second and half ago. In our 11-minute show we all must keep our precise marching technique, all while performing our 11 minutes of music and remember every movement and sound. We do this carrying the full weight of our instruments, some weighing up to 30 or 40 pounds. Besides our instrument’s weight, for brass and woodwind performers like several of us, we must hold our instruments in specific positions, which creates a strain on our upper bodies. We are constantly fighting against our instruments, to effectively move carbon dioxide out of our bodies and oxygen in. We are constantly pushing air against and out of a mouthpiece, small hole and/or metal tubes. Just imagine running a precise stepping marathon while breathing through a small straw and being in sync with everyone else in step and in breath and beat! Color guard members like Vincent also face incredible physical demands. He must use core and upper body strength, as well as a trained body in tune with the properties of his objects to toss large objects (flags, rifles, and sabers) into the air, sometimes even against strong winds. The color guard also expends much energy dancing and running around the field, through and around band members, to meet the demands of the show’s drill.

As a whole, we all need to listen to each other, watch each other, and be in sync with each other. This discipline flows over into all aspects of our lives.

All of this is not free. In fact, two of our friends who got accepted, one of whom marched with us last year, were forced to drop out due to financial strains.

OUR 2023 SEASON OF REHEARSALS AND COMPETITION

Those of us in Gold Drum & Bugle Corps rehearse weekends in Eastvale, California which is near Ontario, and there we have world-class music instructors who spend 8 AM until 6 PM on Saturdays and Sundays helping us refine our craft. During practice weekend schedules, we leave Orcutt on a Friday evening after school and return early Monday morning around 12:30 AM, and then sleep a few hours before getting up for school at 8:30 am.

Our performances in California begin in June and go into July where we get to compete at several stadiums and well-known universities such as the Rose Bowl, Stanford University, Fresno State University, Sacramento State University, Bellflower, Vista, Riverside, and San Bernardino. On July 20th, we fly to Washington DC where we begin our East Coast Tour and our competitions are held in Connecticut, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, New York, Ohio, Illinois, and, finally, Indiana. Blue Stars and Pacific Crest have similar schedules as well. All three Drum Corps compete in the World Championships in August which are held in Indiana at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis.

Suffice it to say it is a huge time commitment for us kids. Altogether, we learn so much. We learn to listen well, work together, learn to be in step, learn movement routines on the field, learn to live together, and, most importantly, we learn greater respect and civility. We also get in excellent shape because of the extreme conditions we endure while performing our 11-minute routine carrying our instruments.

THE MONETARY COSTS

This year, Gold's tuition is set at $4,850 per kid. Tuition for Pacific Crest is $5,100 per kid. Tuition for Blue Stars is $5,650 per kid. Through each Corps program, the tuition costs cover all of the following while we tour and compete in front of thousands of people around the United States (bus transportation expenses, instrument rentals and uniforms, and facilities for practices), all while allowing us to be trained by world class instructors. For those of us who did it last year for the first time, we did not realize the added cost of being out-of-town band members. We would usually take two cars and get two different hotel rooms for two nights for every rehearsal weekend. In May and June it transitions to every weekend, adding significantly to the costs.

The costs involved for our OAHS kids in Drum & Bugle Corps are estimated as follows:

Hotel Lodging for six kids: $250 per night x 30 rehearsal nights = $7,500

Gas (350 miles, round-trip): $92 per rehearsal weekend x 16 weekends = $1472

Van Rental: $120/day x 24 days = $2,880

Meals: 36 Dinners x 6 kids x $18 per meal = $3,888

Music Education Tuition: $4850 ($5,650 for Blue Stars) ($5,100 for Pacific Crest) for six kids = $30,600

Sundries, snacks, sunscreen, laundry for 7.5 months: $100 x 6 kids = $600

Return Flight from Indiana: $367 x 6 kids = $2,202

TOTAL : $49,142 for 6 kids = $8,190.33/kid

Several of us work part-time jobs 15-20 hours a week, (as well as going to school full-time and in our spare time, perform in our school bands, including pep band, marching band, orchestra, jazz band and symphony band.) However, paid jobs are not enough to fund these expenses.

OUR ASK OF OUR COMMUNITY

We need your help. Please consider donating to help support our endeavors. You can also help us by sharing this page. We will have a flyer with a QR Code directing people to this page. Would you be willing to post that flyer in your work?

Thank you for taking the time to help us or share this page.

You can read more about Gold Drum & Bugle Corps here: http://www.goldyoutharts.org/drumcorps/

You can watch us perform at events here:

30 Jun Corps at the Crest – San Diego Vista, CA 6:45 PM PT

01 Jul Drum Corps at the Rose Bowl Pasadena, CA 6:00 PM PT

02 Jul Western Corps Connection San Bernardino, CA 5:00 PM PT

07 Jul MidCal Champions Showcase Fresno, CA 7:00 PM PT

08 Jul DCI West Stanford, CA 6:00 PM PT

09 Jul DCI Capital Classic Sacramento, CA 6:30 PM PT

10 Jul Resound Bakersfield, CA 7:00 PM PT

14 Jul Riverside Open Riverside, CA 6:30 PM PT

15 Jul Gold Showcase Vista, CA 7:00 PM PT

16 Jul So Cal Classic Bellflower, CA 4:00 PM PT

23 Jul TBD - Connecticut Fairfield, CT

25 Jul DCI New Hampshire Manchester, NH 7:00 PM ET

26 Jul TBD - Syracuse Syracuse, NY

28 Jul Music on the Mountain Sheffield, PA 7:00 PM ET

29 Jul Spartan Thunder Lima, OH 7:30 PM ET

31 Jul TBD - Illinois Dixon, IL

01 Aug TBD - Midwest

04 Aug Tournament of Drums Cedar Rapids, IA 8:00 PM CT

05 Aug DCI Eastern Illinois Charleston, IL 7:30 PM CT

07 Aug DCI Open Class World Championship Prelims Marion, IN 6:00 PM ET

10 Aug-13 Aug DCI World Championship Prelims Indianapolis, IN 10:45 AM ET