Marshall County represents Michiana in Indy 500 parade
An opportunity of a lifetime.
Members of five different marching bands from junior and senior high schools in Marshall County are coming together to represent Michiana in the Indianapolis 500 Parade this Saturday.
Monday marked their final dress rehearsal before heading south early Saturday morning.
The big event was the brainchild of Plymouth High School Band Director Bryan Ames.
“it was exactly a year ago, I was at the Indianapolis 500 parade and I thought boy, this would be really cool to put all our small schools together in Marshall County and create one big band,” said Ames.
For these kids, the opportunity of a lifetime to showcase their skills while the world is watching.
“We all have very good music programs but are a lot of small schools, but wanted to combine efforts and create something big and historic for Marshall County. Our group has almost 225 kids involved,” said Ames.
The 225 members are comprised of students from LaVille High School, Culver Community Schools, Bremen, Plymouth and Triton High Schools.
“You would think it would be really easy but its not, when you have five different band programs and five of them do things slightly differently. It does take a lot of work to put everybody together. The color and drum line started first, they started last month. With a rehearsal to start one flag routine and one drum cadence to get us through the parade,” said Ames.
The parade starts at noon Saturday with the 101st running of the Indy 500 scheduled for Sunday, May 28th on ABC 57.
“Annually over 300 thousand people watch live and a million who watch on television so, we are very excited,” said Ames.