Cherry Hill West High School’s marching band color guard practices this past Wednesday. However, a series of interconnected events led Mark to consider adding the marching band back to his list of responsibilities. At that point, the kids, myself, even the parents were like, ‘we kind of wasted our time,’ because (the situation) was futile.”įrom there, a collective decision was made to drop the marching band and maintain the pep band, where students would be limited to playing in the stands during the Lions’ home football games.

“We practiced a ton getting ready for the shows and everything and we did one show out of five possibilities. “There were five home football games, I think, and it rained on four of them,” Mark said. Though the marching band itself was still active during the school year following Christie’s ascension to the office, West’s football field - still grass at the time - became worn due to use, and frequent rains turned it into a mud bath that made it almost impossible to put on a decent performance. That meant the band was totally prevented from traveling to road football games as well as competitions both statewide and nationwide. Christie took office in 2010, Mark said, there was a $12 million deficit in the budget, and, as a result, two positions in the marching band were cut along with any funding for transportation.

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