Super group

Summer band has some unique rules.

Students are allowed to begin participating before they reach high school.

They are also allowed to continue the summer after graduation.

This year, the Jay County High School Marching Patriots have seven members taking advantage of that latter opportunity.

Of the 86 Marching Patriots, seven — Jordan Wickey, Brooke Stauffer, Owen Ransom, Destiny McManus, Thomas Charles, Kolby Baldwin and Alex Ardizzone — have already walked across the stage with their diplomas. (Two more, Azael Navarro-Garcia and Sophia Shumaker are helping with the giant flyover flag.)

Their reasons for coming back vary.

Some felt the need to give back.

Others wanted to continue their learning experience and hold on as long as possible.

And some had the desire to make up for an opportunity lost.

“I think a lot of the super seniors that decided to come back this year did this again because we had to miss out on our 2020 year,” said snare drummer Destiny McManus, “and we kind of wanted to fulfill that moment of doing summer band for that last season.”

The entirety of the 2020 summer band season was canceled because of the coronavirus pandemic, which broke out in the U.S. in March of that year.

For McManus, this marks her fifth year with the Marching Patriots despite losing her sophomore season. (In addition to staying as a “super senior,” she got started early during her eighth grade year as she took part in 2018’s Sideshow.)

Though it’s his fourth year of marching band, Charles is back to actually marching for the first time since 2019. After the 2020 campaign was called off, he spent the last two years atop a ladder directing Jay County’s band as one of its drum majors.

“I feel like I’m having more fun while marching,” said Charles.

He had not planned on coming back, but said he changed his mind because director Chuck Roesch is “one of the best teachers I’ve ever had.”

“He gets personal with you,” Charles said. “He talks to you one on one.”

From the director’s perspective, super seniors are a gift.

Roesch said in the anatomy of a band, the young kids tend to serve as the heartbeat, bringing the energy. The older members of the group provide the wisdom of experience.

And although the super seniors aren’t eligible for official student leadership positions, they lead by way of example and influence.

This year’s large group is well distributed across the band, with Ardizzone and Wickey as the only pair to share the same section (saxophone). Charles stepped down from the ladder to play mellophone, McManus is a snare drummer, Stauffer plays flute, Baldwin is in the trumpet section and Ransom plays trombone.

“In all my years of experience as a director, you can’t ever count on a super senior coming back,” said Roesch, noting the time commitment. “But when they do, it says an awful lot about their confidence in the program, their confidence in the staff and how much they just deeply care about the activity. I look at that as a sign of a healthy organization. …

“It’s a blessing for the rest of the kids to get to spend another summer with them.”

Ardizzone sees it the other way around — being a part of the band has meant so much to his life.

He described his younger self as “that nerdy, quiet kid, didn’t have many friends, socially awkward and just kind of stuck to myself.” On his first day of band, though, he said, he made five new friends. He started opening up.

“I was a totally new person in a span of six weeks,” he said.

In June, that once quiet kid stood in front of a packed gym, giving a graduation speech that had the crowd cheering.

Ardizzone knew during his freshman season that he would want to come back for a super senior year. 

“Because I can’t imagine a summer without band,” he said. “Band has done so much for me as a person. I’m never gonna forget what band has done for me, ever. …

“I’ve had so many good memories with band,” Ardizzone added. “And I felt that I owed the band somehow, so I came back one last time.”