Simpson College’s marching band was ready to storm the field this year, but it seems the thunder will never follow. The plans were set and uniforms were designed for a marching band to debut, but the band will never take the field.
It has been over 40 years since Simpson last had a marching band, so last year, the former academic dean and a new hire supervised the recreation of Simpson’s marching band program, but as plans fell apart and finances came up short, the program was scrapped.
Mike Eckerty, division head for visual and performing arts, said that the music and athletic departments weren’t given a say in many decisions or the overall oversight of the program, an issue that led to the death of the program before it began.
“I think the greatest barrier to starting a marching band is resources,” Eckerty said, “Somebody needs to be actively recruiting to start the new ensemble, but there also needs to be a significant investment in equipment and all of those sorts of things.”
Senior Danny Gilfanov participated in marching band in high school and was interested in getting the chance to get involved again, although he had some concerns about the rushed proposed timeline.

“I was initially very excited to hear we’d be getting a marching band, though I wasn’t sure how feasible it would be to have it all set up within a year,” Gilfanov said. “We had a lot of hype behind it in the beginning; there were new instruments being bought as well as uniform designs being thrown around.”
Uniform designs had been chosen and prototyped, students were ready to get involved and the band was ready to get back together, until the program was erased. The founders who wanted to set up the program left, and financially, Simpson could not provide the necessary funds to create and support the marching band.
“We had a person dedicated to building the marching program, but I guess that starting a program from scratch is much different from entering one that already exists,” Gilfanov said.
Gilfanov wasn’t the only student excited for the program to begin; even non-music majors wanted to join the ensemble.
“While starting a marching band may be difficult, I think starting a pep band again is a more doable thing,” Gilfanov said.
Eckerty, who previously taught high school marching band, loves the idea of marching and pep bands. Eckerty said allowing a pep band to grow into a marching band is a good idea, but it takes a lot of financial investment.
“If a pep band were to grow and be more supportive, it could be used to build something like that, but in the current climate, I’m not sure financially a marching band could be fielded without significant investment,” Eckerty said.
Students and staff were ready for the “Marching Storm” to take the field this year, but were left in limbo, as no announcements or updates followed. Now, all that’s left of the marching band are memories and the uniform mock-ups.