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Marching To Their Own Beat
30 Plays2 years ago
Marching band, drum corps, bugle corps...it's part of sports worldwide, but it's also its own entertainment industry, and competition is fierce and deep. Drum Corps International is Marching Music's Major League, celebrating their 50th year of performance. They hold over 100 events and competitions, including Drumline Battles. One of the top competitors is the Colts Drum & Bugle Corps from Dubuque, Iowa, and today, Yasi and Steven talk with members of the Colts to find out just what it takes to make it into drum corps and marching bands...and stay healthy doing it!
Our guests are Vicki McFarland, director of the Colts Drum & Bugle Corps in Dubuque Iowa and Board member of Drum Corps International, Jennifer Pohlman, athletic trainer for the Colts Drum & Bugle Corps and DCI, and Steven Rock, MD, physician for the Colts Drum & Bugle Corps and Member of Drum Corps International's Marching Arts Safety and Health Advisory Board.
For more information on Athletes and the Arts, go to https://www.athletesandthearts.com.
For more about Drum Corps International, go to https://www.dci.org
For more on the Colts Drum & Bugle Corp, go to https://colts.org
YouTube video heard in the episode of the Colts 2021 performance at the DCI Championships in Indianapolis, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2woDCVxcR5g&t=87s
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Transcript
Introduction to Athletes in the Arts
00:00:06
Speaker
Welcome to the Athletes in the Arts podcast, hosted by Stephen Karaginas and Yasi Ansari.
00:00:21
Speaker
Hello again, everyone. Along with Viacen, sorry, I'm Stephen Karaginas, and welcome to another episode of the Athletes and the Arts Podcast. If you like what you hear today, please feel free to leave a review and let us know what you think and tell others about us. We represent a consortium of 20 different sports medicine and performing arts medicine organizations, all trying to take care of performing artists everywhere. So if you would like more information on us, please go to www.athletesandthearts.com. And now...
Overview of Drum Corps International
00:01:09
Speaker
That was a snippet from the 2021 Colts, Drum, and Bugle Corps performance at the Drum Corps International World Championships. And we're talking today all about Drum Corps. Now, if you've seen the movie Drumline, or have watched Drum Corps and marching bands perform at high schools and college football games, then you know just how awesome these performances are. And Drum Corps International is marching music's major league. Based in Indianapolis, they are the pinnacle of Drum Corps performance.
00:01:34
Speaker
They put out over 100 competitive events nationwide, including the sound sport and drumline battle programs, and they also put on the world championships. And they are celebrating their 50th anniversary this year. But all that performing requires a lot of rehearsing. And that means a lot of physical work. Hours and hours each day in the heat carrying heavy instruments, learning choreography, 100 people on the field, flags, props, costumes. It's exhausting to talk about.
00:02:00
Speaker
In fact, I think most people never give a second thought to the amount of work and training necessary to be in a marching band. Well, if you're one of those people, don't you worry. Today's show will have you covered.
Meet the Experts: Vicky, Jennifer, and Dr. Rock
00:02:11
Speaker
On our show today is Vicky McFarland, board member of DCI and director of the Colts Drum and Bugle Corps in Dubuque, Iowa. Also, we have Jennifer Pullman, athletic trainer for the Colts, as well as Indiana University Southeast. We also have Dr. Steven Rock, primary care sports medicine and physician and a member of DCI's Marching Arts Safety and Health Advisory Board. Yasi.
00:02:33
Speaker
Hi, everyone. We're so excited to have you all here with us today to talk about Drum Corps International and all the work that you guys are each doing in your own specific fields. So Vicki, can you tell me a little bit about the work that you're doing with Drum Corps International?
00:02:47
Speaker
Yeah, I was a band director in central Iowa for three years. I have a degree in music education. And then I started at the Colts in 2001. I directed the Colkinettes, which is an open class group in Drum Corps International. Did that for about 10 years. And I spent the last 10 years with the Colts, as director of the Colts, Drum and Bilo Corps, a world class part of Drum Corps International.
00:03:10
Speaker
Very, very cool. And what about you, Steve? It's so exciting to have you here with us today, too. Can you tell us a little bit about your background and the work that you're doing? Well, I have to say, I started out back in high school as a trombone player, marched in my high school marching band. I ran cross country, too. And so back then, I didn't think, wow, marching band was a whole lot of effort because I was in great shape from cross country.
00:03:37
Speaker
20 or so years later, I'm sitting in my office in Dubuque in a sports medicine clinic, and I see all these kids coming in from the Colts Drum Corps. And they have all these overuse injuries, and I'm going, what is this deal? What's going on? And one thing led to another, and I got involved with what was then the Drum Corps Medical Project, started working more and more with the Colts and trying to build a
00:04:05
Speaker
sort of health and wellness team with them and working with Drum Corps International and getting the health and wellness teams going across the country and making a lot of progress in terms of changing the culture of what's been going on in Drum Corps over the years and making it more safe and health conscious activity for the members.
00:04:27
Speaker
Excellent. And then shifting over to Jennifer. Jennifer, you were an athletic trainer for the Colts for a while. Are you still working with them? Yes, I plan to work with them, even if it's just for a week or two. Very cool. So tell me a little bit about yourself and what brought you here and the work that you're doing right now.
00:04:49
Speaker
Yeah, so I graduated from Clark University in Dubuque, Iowa in 2018. And I wanted to get involved with performing arts. That was like my passion for athletic training, a small little niche. And so Dee Higgins, she was my professor of my program. And she's like, Hey, you want to work for the Colts? And I was like, what is that? And she's like, it's a drone corps. And I was like, Okay, sure. Yeah. If that helps me get involved in
00:05:16
Speaker
And I was like, how hard could it be? I mean, marching band, right?
00:05:22
Speaker
three years later, or four years later, I guess it's been. I've worked with them every season they've been on the road, which is an 18. It's my first year, 19, and then 2021 for last summer, I suppose. And then hopefully I can come back this year as well. Great. Now, I know a lot of our listeners would probably want to know, what's the difference between marching band and drum corps international? What are the significant differences between the two?
00:05:50
Speaker
I was going to say, Steve could take that one from the scientific angle for me more. And I did march in the Colts for two years in the 90s. And I was a high school participant in track,
Understanding Drum Corps Intensity and Lifestyle
00:06:06
Speaker
basketball, volleyball. So I had a lot of sports in my background. And I cut a minute off my best two mile time from high school track after I got home from drum corps.
00:06:17
Speaker
One thing I loved as a student that I hadn't realized even when I joined a drum corps was the combination of the athletic and musical skill sets. So it's the intensity and challenge of what we do, the length of our productions,
00:06:34
Speaker
is much longer, much more combination of the theatrical aspects. I think of it almost like musical theater with our stage as a football field. And through the years and as the activity has gotten, even our productions get more elaborate and we use more props and different things in our shows. That's where, and the,
00:06:59
Speaker
The show length increases, the demand on the individual performers has intensified as well. The demand on the performers and drum corps is more intense than marching arts.
00:07:11
Speaker
Then your traditional high school or college marching band in that way. And a lot of it is because of the length of our rehearsal days. When our students move in around Memorial Day weekend, we are on the road together 24-7 for 87 days from 80 to 90 days each year.
00:07:32
Speaker
So we are doing Drum Corps 490 days for almost 24 hours a day. We sleep eight hours of those, but it's pretty much all Drum Corps. What's the core activity? Just so I understand, for Drum Corps International, what is the core activity of the group? Do you have certain performances that are part of what you do? Are you always touring? Are you random football games or big games? How does that work?
00:08:02
Speaker
Our traditional season will involve four to five weeks of what we call spring training. That is in the month of June, so we are entering the summer months. That's where we learn the show. And then we start traveling. It's a different city every night, typically. We might stay in one place for a few days, but we spend the next five, about five weeks traveling for us, starting in Iowa, down to Texas, sometimes over to Florida,
00:08:30
Speaker
down through Louisiana, then we go up to Atlanta, we're up in Allentown, we're in the Upper Northeast, and then we work our way to Indianapolis. The last week of the season is the Drum Corps International World Championships, where all the corps gather and compete. So on a typical, what I'd call tour day, we will, after we get done with the show, we pack up, we travel, our students sleep on the bus overnight,
00:08:57
Speaker
We might get into school sometime between 3 and 5 a.m. Then when we're lucky we get more than a few hours of floor time in some ways and in some of this I'm giving you a roundabout realm like you could it sounds crazy when I may describe it basically
00:09:16
Speaker
We get a few hours on the floor in a group setting. We get up. We unload everything. We practice, usually between 9 and 3 p.m. Then we pack everything up and then we go do a show. Then we pack everything up.
00:09:31
Speaker
And then we sleep on the bus as we travel to the next town. So it becomes a demanding travel schedule outside of the spring training.
Nutrition and Health in Drum Corps
00:09:40
Speaker
Spring training is intense physically. When we started quantifying, I had reached out to Dr. Rock early on because it was just a lot of students. My first year with Colts was there were a lot of students that had issues that I didn't know how to help with. And it's like, Steve, we need help.
00:09:59
Speaker
Dr. Rock has been able to help us quantify some of what we actually do a little more specifically in a normal day. I can't remember if it's 12 miles a day about Steve? Yeah. We tried a pilot study. We were using a very reputable heart rate monitor and activity monitor, which just to show you the level of activity they're doing,
00:10:23
Speaker
All of the monitors broke. We had 20 of them out there. All of them broke in less than two weeks. The company couldn't believe it. They repaired it. We brought about the next year and they survived like 11 days. But in that amount of time, we were able to get a sense of caloric expenditure. They were burning over 5,000 calories a day. And this is while they're still in camp before it really ramps up.
00:10:49
Speaker
We got estimates of about 6 to 13 miles of marching a day. Again, this is before things really ramped up a lot during the later part of the year as well. 6 to 13 miles a day. Yeah. Oh my God. Well, I know one thing I would never do then. Oh my gosh, that's amazing.
00:11:10
Speaker
Yeah, and there was a study actually that came out a few years ago, too, where they looked at body mass index and drum core kids from the beginning of the season to the end of the season. And when you actually calculate it out, the average kid loses about eight to nine pounds during the season, during three months. They're eating four meals a day plus snacks in between. And trust me, I've watched these kids at the cook trucks. They are not shy. Their plates are piled high.
00:11:40
Speaker
It's just, it's incredible to see what they, they can pack in, but they're burning it all off and then some. Yeah. I know a lot of dieticians who work, um, with drum core and, and, you know, one of the goals is to make sure that they're maintaining or gaining weight during this time and not losing, right? Like we want from a nutritional standpoint, a hydration standpoint, we want to make sure all of that is adequately, um, taken care of and, and the athletes are meeting their needs to not.
00:12:10
Speaker
lose because they're they are expending so much energy and losing a lot of fluids as well. So, Jeff, do you help monitor all that? Are you on top of how their nutrition and hydration status is?
00:12:23
Speaker
I definitely am a hydration pusher. I would say that for sure. I put a star badge on myself. Hydration is definitely key. I don't necessarily monitor the food as much, but like Steve or Vicki said, they are not shy at the cook truck. They are definitely eating.
00:12:43
Speaker
PB and J's is a snack. It's like their best friend too. So I know they're eating, so I don't deal with the dietitian or food aspect, but their jugs are always with them. And I've got a lot of pee light and electrolyte packets that they come to me asking for. And they bring some of those over the summer for themselves too, which is smart. But we have Squencher. Squencher is like our Gatorade. It's on our truck, so they love the Squencher.
00:13:12
Speaker
What age range of performers are we talking about as far as like the average, you know, drum corps group competing?
00:13:20
Speaker
The world-class core is between probably an average age of 19 to 20. It varies core to core slightly, but right in that age range. Most students are 16 to 21. Most of the students are over the age of 18. Open class, like our cadet core with our organization, they will have students start as young as nine years old, but typically 12 to 19 years of age. Our younger group takes students at a younger age than a lot of the
00:13:49
Speaker
groups might an open class, I would say the open class average age 16 to 17. Some groups are older than that, though. So each organization, each drum corps is an independent organization that's participates under DCI's umbrella. And do each college will college compete specifically? Or are there drum corps groups that call people from various schools?
00:14:14
Speaker
Everyone is an independent group, and the Colts example, again, speaking for our organization, is a traditional year. We have students from 28 states and typically four foreign countries. Wow. What do auditions look like for drum corps? How do these athletes get picked out?
00:14:32
Speaker
musical skills, visual skills. And one of the things we do also is kind of a character and responsibility interview. So it's skill sets and communication and responsibility. Most students are the best in their communities at music or at dance or at color guard, percussion. There's a lot WGI with winter drum lines.
00:15:01
Speaker
And then there's also bands of America, Music For All, they have intents. There are a number of schools nationally that offer intense high school programs that perform on a different level than what most people might think of as your traditional marching band. My analogy, I think, for a lot of people who aren't familiar with drum corps, I say, if I said right now, hey, I want you to take this 27-pound weight
00:15:27
Speaker
and go carry it at a pace of 120, 150 beats per minute for 12 miles. You can stop for water, but you can't stop for more than five minutes at a time that most people would say, okay, that's a workout. But a lot of times what we found, especially I found early on in
00:15:46
Speaker
My career in world class as a director is a lot of times many doctors don't understand the physical demand. So that's where we've had to find ways of translating. And when I go back to once, like Dr. Rock and Jen getting involved,
00:16:03
Speaker
We went from something, I mean, we would see maybe 14 students a year that might not complete a season if I go back a decade. Since having the involvement of athletic traders and sports med specialists, we in 18 and 19, we didn't have more than one season ending injury during that 90 day season. And that takes a tremendous amount of preparation to make sure
00:16:27
Speaker
that we can achieve those results. But it's made a tremendous difference once I had started thinking more about the sports medicine and athletic training world. It's demonstrated through our numbers of retention.
00:16:41
Speaker
Now what does the status of training look like right now?
Preparation and Health Screening for Members
00:16:44
Speaker
It looks like spring training is coming up, is that correct? When does spring training begin? What needs to be done in preparation of spring training? Are they still going to be touring in buses right now? What's happening?
00:16:58
Speaker
Yes, we are going to move in around Memorial Day. During the winter months, we have winter camps. I call 2021 a hybrid year. Some students are virtual only. Some are in person. We use a lot of student interest groups who will begin guiding their physical preparation so that they're ready to move into the athletic intensity of what our spring training is.
00:17:21
Speaker
And then we use a pre-screening. We just actually, last month, just last weekend, we completed, we do pre-screenings on, Steve, if you want to talk about what that is in a minute, but we do a pre-participation physical. Each student does with their own doctor. We also do orthopedic pre-screening that helps us understand students. And then we also do interviews.
00:17:43
Speaker
kind of to help understand the emotional health of each student. But the breeze screening I think has helped a lot because there's different issues musicians might have athletically that we don't discover without this process. And we partner with two of our local colleges where their students who are learning in the PA field and athletic training field get actually actual practice working with our students. Yeah, that's something we started about.
00:18:09
Speaker
10 or 11 years ago, where we would come to the January camp. And we initially brought a lot of athletic training students. And this last year, we just started with our physician assistant students from the other school in town. I think this is where Jen got her first taste of drum core too. Right. And
00:18:29
Speaker
Um, and when I remember the first year we did it, the kids would look at us and go on kind of, what are you guys up to? What are you doing? It was the attitude like you're here to keep us or somehow exclude us from our part, uh, being selected or participating. But now most of them are excited. They, that's almost an expectation. They're, they're ready to talk. They, they enjoy the fact that we can talk their language, um, and understand what the demands they're going to have, um, for the summer will be.
00:18:58
Speaker
and then try to identify those things that might need to be addressed before they get to the summer. A lot of them think, oh, well, I had it last summer. It's gone now. We'll come back. But one of the adages we have is tour is not the place to get well because it's not going to happen. And we found a lot of interesting things over the years, a few things that
00:19:26
Speaker
I'm glad we actually do the screenings now, because there's a few things where we actually did need to make the recommendation that they not go on tour because of, one was a cardiac condition that could have led to sudden death. And had we not been doing these screenings, that could have gone under the radar and ended in a catastrophic outcome. So we've had a lot of better interactions than that too.
00:19:56
Speaker
found a lot of kids where we can really get them on a good program before the season starts so that when they move in in May, they're ready to go and they don't have the same problems they had the previous year. So Vicki, how did you get the relationship started with having sports medicine professionals, athletic trainers? How did that evolve with DCI?
00:20:22
Speaker
That evolution has been kind of fun. It almost started out of desperation though, and I go, okay, this Dr. Rock guy is involved in marching health and wellness. He's in Dubuque. I'm going to call him and just go, I need help. Then that with the combination of Dr. Higgins from Clark University, that's what I really appreciated from these guys is they kind of helped
00:20:44
Speaker
They're very patient with where we are at. So as they learned about us, I got to learn about the sports med world. And then that's when we went from just having a health.
00:20:55
Speaker
coordinator to going to an athletic trainer. We had one athletic trainer, sort of ATC before that we had Jen. And then Dr. Higgins had said, you should meet this Jen gal. I think she'll like it. And I still go back to if I'm walking through the evolution is Jen in her interview, one of my favorite things was she was like, what sort of records do you expect?
00:21:17
Speaker
And someone was with us in the interview and they just said records, like, and I was like, records. So I mean, just because even all the detail, I mean, we're talking about, I should note our team size is 160 students. And so just all the details and the longevity. Now, we're actually bridging to the point where we have two certified athletic trainers with us at all times, just because
00:21:43
Speaker
It took a while to bridge the organization to that point. And then the learning process of getting to know each other. And like Dr. Rock noted, at first, students think you're just trying to keep them out of the show. And then you have staff members who want students rehearsing. And then you have me where it's like, I don't want to see a kid on a sideline. And so sometimes there's guilt involved. You just have
00:22:08
Speaker
all these different feelings and emotions. So the first few years were a little more stressful as we acclimated. But after you get used to that, everyone loves, everyone is working to keep people as healthy as possible. And that serves everyone. Like when we take care of people, everything else takes care of itself.
00:22:28
Speaker
But it was different just to acclimate to because even Dr. Rock's like, hey, this student could have a severe heart issue where they might die. He gives me a sports medicine chart. I'm just like a packet to read and some research. I'm like, you just tell me this is dangerous, it's okay. But that was when I noticed on the sports medicine reports, they put billiards on there.
00:22:55
Speaker
like pool is considered a sport but like nothing of what we're doing is on these standard charts. So no wonder you know when we take a student to the doctor that they may not know that we have to ask a lot of clarifying questions to get the best information but Jen what would you say over the last few years as
00:23:18
Speaker
like from where you started where you had not even seen drunk or she's like xylophone learning the names of the instrument. Yeah, I again, I had no idea I was like, what is that a tuba? Like what is the difference? So I feel like for me stepping in I just absorbing exactly what I was getting myself into was a shock. But
00:23:41
Speaker
I mean, I think gaining their respect from the caption heads, so there's color guard, there's brass, there's percussion, and they're like the coach of like a sports team. And so like me being in contact with them was essential for them to understand
00:23:57
Speaker
What was going on? If I had to set a kid out for a specific reason or if they had to be limited or any shape or form, take a break. Originally, it was just harder. They didn't understand why. Why? Back in the old day, we didn't need to have this X amount of time off or whatever, but it was important for me to tell them this is why I'm doing this. I'd rather them have a little bit of a break
00:24:25
Speaker
right now than sit out for a week or have to go home because they develop a stress fracture or something like that. So gain their respect from the caption head was nice and we've had overlap over the last couple of years too and overlap with the kids. And so they respect me and what I do and all the other athletic trainers who've worked with us. And so, yeah, I don't know. I think we've developed some preventative stuff too along the way, like how they prepare to come to drum corps and
00:24:55
Speaker
Yeah, we've implemented those types of things and they start to understand they need to take care of themselves before they come because healing on tour is not easy to do. It's time to get strong there as well. But yeah, that's kind of how it's evolved for me. So Jen, what are some of the common injuries and challenges that you're noticing within the different disciplines of DCI?
Injury Management and Sports Medicine Integration
00:25:16
Speaker
Yeah, it was a lot of lower extremity, if you can imagine, ankle sprains, strains, things like that, but there were definitely upper extremity injuries that would occur. I mean, if you think about a tuba being on your shoulder for like 12 hours a day, people were wondering like, why do I have back pain or why do I have shoulder pain? So me understanding like watching them carry their instrument like, oh, that makes sense. Maybe we could work on this biomechanical change, or maybe we could
00:25:46
Speaker
you know, change something with your drum that would make it easier and less painful for you to carry. So lower extremity, definitely. But I mean, concussions were prevalent as well. In the strangest ways, I swear, like, I was like, okay, what happened? You're having signs of a concussion. What happened? They're like, I was standing up really fast and hit my head on the bus when I was trying to climb over my
00:26:12
Speaker
my bus partner was like, whoa, what? I've never heard of a concussion. It was just the silliest things. But they're definitely prevalent. And we have a protocol for those as well. It was a lot of general medical conditions as well. I mean, anything from the flu to the stomach bug to whatever that is. And so we learned what quarantining was years before.
00:26:39
Speaker
COVID quarantining. So I feel like we knew what we were doing once that started. But yeah, I mean, we would wear masks, we would separate them, isolate them and get them healthy and better and whatnot. But yeah, those are some of the things I see. Wound care, mental health. I mean, it all comes to me. So that's, yeah, some of the things I see. What happens when that person has to be taken out for a performance? You have swings, understudies, how does it work?
00:27:08
Speaker
or he just changed the routine.
00:27:12
Speaker
It depends on the person and the role. So we've gotten, I would say that's something that we've gotten more flexible as an organization with through the last few years and acclimating to this process knowing like, and that's where I think the pressure 10 years ago was a lot different. Like every student needed to be in the show all the time. So we do have, we carry a few, whether you call it, most groups call them alternate students that sometimes can fill in those essential roles. Most of the time we,
00:27:42
Speaker
try to use the other students on the field to work around it, to work around that person being out. But when we say we have 154 students on the field at any time, each one has a unique role. We might only carry two to 10 alternates. So those individuals can't really understand every single dot on the field and what to do. So we just fill in S&EDB and work with it. As instructors,
00:28:12
Speaker
We understand that. Everyone seems more patient, I would say, Jen, with that now than four years ago as crisis if someone was going to be out. But that's what we were seeing was leading to longer issues. Yeah, it was interesting. So a lot of the times,
00:28:30
Speaker
And if someone had to be pulled from a show, it was, well, are they completely out? Or can they do something? And by something, I mean, even move a prop, because they are in charge of that prop. And if that prop doesn't get moved, and you have to sign someone else to do it from their dot, and it can get messy.
00:28:48
Speaker
Um, that's where me being in contact with the caption head saying, Hey, okay, is there a specific piece that is really challenging or not challenging for them that they can just move this prop and hide underneath of it? Like working with them to understand the show and where we can give and where we can take. Uh, but yeah.
00:29:09
Speaker
So Steve, what was the biggest challenge for you when you came on board and started working with the organization? Like from a sports medicine doctor perspective, what are the things that you found the most difficult to work with and how's the change since then? Well, I'd say the first few people I saw that came in and actually still remember the person who got me involved with the coils was actually one of the color guard members who had a metacarpal fracture from her rifle.
00:29:38
Speaker
So she spun her rifle, hit her in the hand, had a metacarpal fracture, had to put her in a cast. And we started talking just about, you know, music and things in general. And she says, you should work with the Colts and kind of got me in touch with people. And that's how I got involved. And one thing led to another. And here we are today. But what I found probably the most challenging back then was sort of the
00:30:03
Speaker
trying to get through some of the cultural norms that had evolved in the activity over so many years. I kind of feel like it reminded me of wrestling when I started in residency, where there's these traditions that you had to cut weight for wrestling to be the best you could be. Well, in drum corps, when we would do the screenings, if you asked them, have you ever had heat illness, they'd say, yeah, it's drum corps.
00:30:33
Speaker
And you'd say, well, how many times did you have it last year? Oh, I passed out four times. It's like, well, you know, that's not normal. You know, so that's that that was one of the things, you know, like to work on first. OK. The other thing was some of these kids would come in and they'd say, you know, if I'm not back on the field full in three days, I have to go home. We had a very it was a very strict time limit. And I'm going, you have
00:31:01
Speaker
probably what's close to a stress fracture, if not a stress fracture, I can't get you better in three weeks, let alone three days. And so that kind of created that situation where people wouldn't want to come to see me potentially because, hey, I might be the one sending them home, where it was really the buildup that led to them being sent home, not what I diagnosed.
00:31:28
Speaker
Over the years, we've had to be patient, but all those things have changed. I mean, the heat illness thing has completely changed. We've made a lot of other changes, especially like concussions. I remember hearing about concussions in the past where people were, it's showtime, you have to go on, kids ready to throw up, very symptomatic, and you're going to put them on a field with bright lights, very loud.
00:31:55
Speaker
people moving all over the place and making them exert, I mean, all four things they could easily set off concussive symptom. Yet, you know, hey, it's banned, so why not? I mean, in my office too, I have kids that come in from the high schools and my nurse always asked them, are you in performing arts, in show, choir, in marching band? And a lot of these kids are in that. And when you ask them about going back, or you talked about going back after their concussion,
00:32:24
Speaker
They don't consider marching band to be something they have to slowly return to. They think, oh yeah, that's like going back to English class. When I'm ready for English class, I'll go back to marching band. Think about what they're gonna have to do on the field. As I consider it a sport, so therefore, you can go right back to it. I'll be ready to play football, but I'll be in band way before that, or cross country, or volleyball.
00:32:52
Speaker
It was really helpful writing out the Return to Learn process, for example, or the concussion protocol that we use now, because even with us working together, finding ways to translate that actually have understanding in most musical programs across the country.
00:33:12
Speaker
One of the things was even for us, a few years ago where Dr. Rock had said, they can do a breathing block when they're at step two of the return protocol. I called Steve because I'm like, hey, do you realize our breathing block? We're jogging with all 80 students at 150 beats per minute for one mile while we do controlled breathing. He's like, no, I thought you were standing there and breathing.
00:33:41
Speaker
It's like, so even in my role as a director, it's like trying to find where those gaps are. Because if we have those gaps, those are things we can incorporate and spell out differently. And even just working with a different volume of the instruments, like a snare drum can sound like a gunshot. It's that loud. It's that good for someone's brain who's recovering. And what can they do? How can we pace it back? And since using a return to performance protocol
00:34:11
Speaker
we have not had students have reoccurring concussions where when I go back pre-Gen and pre-Dr. Rock, students would often start to develop symptoms again. And that was just for me where it's like, I don't want this kid having to sit out. I don't want them to have headaches. There has to be a better way to treat this. Well, as a musician, I don't have those answers, but Steve and Jen do. And I am still learning. Honestly, I say every year I learn something new about the activity.
00:34:41
Speaker
Jen knows a lot more than I do because she gets to go on tour. One of these years I keep saying, I'm going to go on tour with these guys for at least a few days to learn even more. So Jen brought up how a lot of the challenges that can come up are on the tour buses. And I just, for those who are listening, tour buses are a big part of the DPI journey. And I would love for you guys to share a little bit about, you know, what
00:35:09
Speaker
what things look like on the road and what kinds of things you guys are seeing out on the road and some of the experiences of the athletes and how you are keeping them healthy while they are traveling.
Recovery, Sleep, and Hearing Protection Strategies
00:35:23
Speaker
I know sleep is a big one, right? And so getting enough sleep is going to be so important for their recovery. How do you guys ensure that they're getting enough sleep?
00:35:32
Speaker
I wish people had neon signs that said, here's how I feel. One of the things I know that what we do is at least by allowance of
00:35:42
Speaker
this in terms of how we calculate sleep time right so sleep time on a bus is not like as pure as sleep time on a floor so we will factor our schedule like always figure there's an hour for free um you're basically that student time so we don't count time that they're socializing as sleep time
00:36:03
Speaker
And a lot of groups might do it. Basically, it comes out to around 50% of the actual hours on the bus are considered floor time. What we want to do is quantify about eight hours of sleep. Spring training's easier when we're in one location where they get eight hours of floor time every night. When we're traveling, it's not the same quality. And a lot of it, I've learned too, just really being able to adjust to the stress you sense from the group. And because it's such a large group, finding norms that work
00:36:33
Speaker
for most people become important. For us, the eight hours was huge. And I also think the less stress, I don't have a way of scientifically verifying this, but I do know the more stress we have, whether it's in travel, even with competition or the show, the less quality of sleep
00:36:55
Speaker
students seem to have. So that's where when we make sure, and even down to what buses do we choose to charter for the summer, students who can lay across the aisle, the more students that can sleep on the floor to sleep flat, even on a bus, the more helpful that is. A big thing for us was really, I think, the food. We like at the Colts to be known for our food program, but the first day we wore biometric monitors
00:37:23
Speaker
entirely changed our food program. We went to, okay, we're just going to go to 6,000 calories per day per student. We can't start less than 5,000 calories. We tried healthy cereals for summer, but they don't eat them. If the students don't eat it, it has no nutritional value.
00:37:46
Speaker
finding the sweet spot of what people actually enjoy, you know, putting out chocolate syrup with that milk at the end of the day. And we used to like not do ice cream and drum core, but Dr. Rocket said, get them whatever calcium you can in whatever way you can. Jen will say, hey, they need more fresh vegetables. So we'll like shove more broccoli in the casserole. But if we mix it into what they're doing, some of those things where, yeah, they're disguised and
00:38:16
Speaker
or some healthy things are disguised in the normal routines that we do because there's some healthy things that a lot of teenagers, college kids don't like. I'm trying to think of other, oh, one of the easy things just from a safety standpoint,
00:38:31
Speaker
uh that I thought that that really helps is in our leadership team we assigned a male and a female bus captain to every bus um making sure that we have male and female representation in all places training more student leaders that gives us a lot more eyes and ears because what someone might be comfortable saying to me or how they might say it to Chen
00:38:52
Speaker
or how they might say it to the doctor. Those are different conversations. When we work together as a team, we can find better ways to make sure the experience is more positive. But yeah, someone will probably still stand up into a door or an overhang. We're trying to think, Jen, what else we've changed or adjusted in the last few years? Well, I have one. Cooling breaks. So when you guys are down in Texas,
00:39:21
Speaker
You're rehearsing all day on a field. It's usually artificial turf, high temperatures. It's 105 degrees outside, 108 degrees outside. And then you go to a cook truck and a lot of the kids will eat under a tree and change the parking lot. But I remember it was a year, two years ago.
00:39:39
Speaker
Vicki said, yeah, we started telling the kids to go inside and eat. And she goes, they came out so fresh. They were ready to go. And it's like, wow. So it's going in the high school where it's air conditioned and coming out just that 30 minutes or eat and then come back on the field. That was just great. It was just a simple change.
00:40:03
Speaker
Yeah, I think it was around, oh, I would pause here to say, Steve, your microphone is cutting out again. Right. But I was going to say it was about in 2015, where I finally kind of put my foot down. This was right before the athletic trainer days, where I'm like, I tried it everyone else's way. And I felt like it was,
00:40:27
Speaker
It put the entire corner serious situation in the heat. So I've spent a lot of time trying to come up with simpler analogies, even for other groups as they acclimate to athletic trainers. And I described the heat thing now because it must be, I don't know if it's just an old school thing or a military thing where it was like, oh, you should just keep your temperature acclimated. If you're acclimated to the heat, it's better to stay constant. But I'm like, my analogy now is it's like my cell phone.
00:40:56
Speaker
Like if I use it a lot, then I need to go plug it in. And our cool down breaks, like no longer than two hours outside in the heat on any heat advisory, you know, you go in and we're going to recharge and then we can go out and do something again. And strategically like planning and scheduling our day to have more of those breaks. Finding a staff member, we have tea time with Tom. Sometimes we're going to have story time for 30 minutes, but
00:41:22
Speaker
So even though our days are long, we can be more intelligent about structuring those events. They love the cool down breaks. Like she said, even if it was 20, 30 minutes inside and they got to eat frozen grapes, they were set for the rest of the day. They were good.
00:41:41
Speaker
So how do you guys manage environmental exposures? Loud noise, exposure, decibels, and those kinds of things. There's a lot more awareness now about hearing loss, injury, and obviously drums are somewhat loud. So how do you guys monitor that and manage that?
00:42:00
Speaker
I feel like most of the answers here is we can get better at all these things yet and we are getting better. Most students, all percussion is where some level of hearing protection. And the music, the quality of musicians, earplugs have gotten so much better. So I, it's, it's more so that they have them with percussion, especially. We have a ways to go in the brass world, I think in that way. And
00:42:28
Speaker
Steve, you have way more, again, factual data on this than... Oh, yeah. Well, there's actually a music director who did his PhD thesis on hearing protection in Drum Corps and put sound monitors on hat visors and found, I think it was a percussion, like even by noon, exceeded safe limits for the whole day.
00:42:55
Speaker
And even though you're outdoors, I mean, even the brass members, everybody, they would be at risk for hearing loss without hearing protection. And so it's been an effort to get people to wear musicians' earplugs. A couple of years ago, we did have our audiologist here in town accompany us to the screenings. It did hearing screenings for all the members who wanted one.
00:43:22
Speaker
And we only actually found one person who had hearing loss and he already knew he had it. It was one of the staff members. And so I kind of thought we were pretty lucky, but I've also talked to people who have marched years ago who didn't wear any sort of hearing protection while they were on the field. And I mean, some people even in their twenties who had significant hearing loss, most of them were either in the symbol line or the drum line. And unfortunately,
00:43:52
Speaker
You know, once it's gone, you can't recover it. So. Vicky, how is your hearing?
00:43:59
Speaker
What? How is your hearing for all these years? Right. I have average hearing and I did not wear any form of hearing protection when I performed as a brass member. But I would say now, or any time, now I like to be a model of safety when we're doing construction. In the summer, I am not in the middle of the field all day, but good hearing for me.
00:44:29
Speaker
I still have in my med kit from the summers, like individual ear plugs from the Colts. And I used one the other day for a job I was doing, I was sitting right next to a loudspeaker, it's just beside the point, but I just was like, thank you Colts for providing these ear buds for me.
00:44:48
Speaker
Yeah. Earplugs for us, even the cheap ones, are kind of like masks now, right? Where you just have them laying everywhere and we'll just pick up boxes and then put them in the check-in box and put them in the students' music boxes. So some of the practicality is just making sure we have the resources available. So even though the stuffy construction ones aren't ideal, they're still better than nothing and they work in a bind.
00:45:14
Speaker
And really, I'm not sure a staff member would let a percussionist rehearse in a closed room without some level of hearing production. And again, when we go back a decade, that's where it's like how quickly some of these things shift. That would have been very different then to now. And just general awareness, I'd say, has improved through time. Yeah, and in the early days, I remember
00:45:43
Speaker
Seeing one of the percussion instructors Standing in a circle of I think it was like six snare drums and he squatted down Also, all the snares are pointing in at the the instructor in the circle He squatted down and put his head right in the center of all six snares as they're playing I'm going I was just aghast I couldn't believe you could actually do something like that and
00:46:11
Speaker
not lose hearing almost instantaneously. You got to hear those inner diddles. Absolutely. The thing is, I want to hear those diddles for the duration of my lifetime, and I want them to too. The quality too, I think as a performer, especially in this where it's a little tougher on wind players, like brass players, is when you put the earplugs in, and this is where you need a higher quality musician's earplug, where it can sound different inside your head,
00:46:41
Speaker
than what you're used to rehearsing as. And I think even bridging back into the physical world too, one thing that we learn as musicians growing up in school is the amount of repetition that we have to do. Like if I'm going to practice a phrase, I'm going to do that phrase, you know,
00:46:58
Speaker
four to 40 times just over and over and over and over because that repetition will lead to excellence. And then I'm going to expand that. So then one thing I think that drove Steve nuts sometimes is are like musicians desire to need to repeat it over and over and over and over and over so that it feels the same. It looks the same. It's the same every time I do it.
00:47:22
Speaker
because some of those habits are what can lead to the hearing strain, that can lead to the overuse injuries. Now, a question I have is a lot of the athletes, their ages range, I think we said an average of between 16 to 21. They're performing about 30 times a summer, more than that, I'm sure, on average. For 12 hours. Yeah.
Mental Health Support in the Drum Corps
00:47:48
Speaker
Yeah. 30 ticketed events.
00:47:52
Speaker
80 days of 12-hour rehearsal days. It's a lot, right? During such a period of growth for these athletes, what does the mental health support systems look like on the road? Is there therapy on the road? How are these athletes taken care of from a mental health perspective? Well, they have me to come to. They definitely come to me.
00:48:22
Speaker
I am no longer close to any of their ages, but at one time when I started I was closer and they felt comfortable coming to me and talking to me. And now I'm like considered friends with them, some of them, you know, they trust me to talk to them. I know they come to Vicky and everyone else too, but
00:48:41
Speaker
I know that they do yoga in the mornings too. I've led them through their like, call it the PT block, like a physical fitness block. I've led them through yoga and stretch blocks and just some mindfulness. I mean, I can go a long way with the long days and long hours that they're going through and just reminders. I mean, I think I've told them about some apps on their phones, they can utilize like calm, or just look on a YouTube channel for five minutes and just listen to some meditation and
00:49:10
Speaker
you know, on your trips from one competition to another, getting ready for a performance, just taking that, you know, alone time with all the chaos around you, just to take that mental block time to, you know, settle back in and have some mindfulness.
00:49:27
Speaker
It's a really good question because I've never really been asked in that way. I would say we've utilized a wide variety of tools and people. We have 154 students. We generally have 40 professional instructional staff. We have another 20 support staff. We have professionals we consult with. Then we have a leadership team of
00:49:53
Speaker
pointed veterans that will point students to and but I still go back to the very beginning because none of the people I just referred to in general are not like mental health professionals. So one thing that that's really helped over the last five years is especially like reorienting the questions on our medical form to understand maybe some pre-existing conditions
00:50:18
Speaker
to make it more common to talk about mental health situations, to talk about depression, to talk about the particularly increased levels of anxiety that we see from students. That's probably one out of five students have some level of measurable, they're prone to high levels of anxiety. So understanding those things about a student before we start help us
00:50:45
Speaker
all understand what to be aware of, opens that channel of communication. The biggest thing I would say from my end as a director is making sure that everyone that's with us has someone they feel they can turn to that understands what to do or where to go. Because there are things that are far beyond
00:51:05
Speaker
you know, gender myself and that need a health care, a mental health professional to handle, but making sure that people who do get turned to have understanding of what to do in those dynamics.
00:51:19
Speaker
I feel like what would be awesome would be if a former DCI member could go into becoming a mental health professional and being a support system, whether virtually or on the road for some of these athletes.
00:51:36
Speaker
you know, I always swear by the athletic trainers that I've worked with, I think they're the best. And it's always so great to be able to connect with them, both as a dietician and a student athlete that might need them. I think the athletic trainers are wonderful. And I also feel like, you know, when hydration, nutrition, training, sleep, and then there's that mental health piece that is something to
00:52:00
Speaker
to consider and to have someone to connect with during some of the difficulties that can come up on the road and just the sports aspect of having that competitive edge and being ready to go back, you know, out there and perform. DCI has a group of us called the Marching Arts Safety and Health Group, and we have a lot of subgroups. And one of those is a mental health subgroup. And so a lot of people in that group are
00:52:29
Speaker
well, athletic trainers and sports medicine physicians, mental health providers and things like that. And so we're sort of on call for any of the cores across the country. So if there's a situation that's above and beyond what the core staff and medical staff can handle, they can always contact either the mental health team or I mean, I've gotten plenty of texts and calls from cores on the road. Hey, can I see this kid when
00:52:58
Speaker
the shows in Madison and check them out because I have a little bit a different viewpoint than maybe the people in the ER would. So my goal is always keep the kids out of the ERs if we can and if we can get them access to resources that understand what they're going through for the summer.
00:53:20
Speaker
Well, that's the thing about athletic trainers, right? Because you guys are the doctor, the nutritionist, the psychologist, the therapist, the mom, everything for these athletes. So without trainers, all this can't work. I like to think we have a good purpose. You guys have a great purpose.
00:53:43
Speaker
Even acclimating drum corps and marching bands to athletic trainers, I think over the last few years, people like a common person doesn't understand that an athletic trainer is actually like a medical professional. Like they're not just that person that stands on the sideline waiting to sit with you if you get hurt. Like there's a high level of training that person can be trusted with decisions and should be the one driving a lot of those decisions.
00:54:13
Speaker
I was thinking back, Jen, even in your interview, to that very first time, it's part of our interview process, just preparing trainers that they might see more emotional or mental health concerns than they might in an athletic dynamic. Have you found it to be similar, Jen? Or would you say it's more in the drum corps? Does it just vary? I would say it's similar or varies. Maybe even more so.
00:54:41
Speaker
being a part of the arts, like even with other programs, I've worked with like dancers or musicianists at Indiana University. We all have a special, I don't know how to say it, like the arts, I don't know how to describe it, it's like the arts. We have a lot of emotion and we're emotional and we're passionate and I feel like sometimes that's
00:55:05
Speaker
a blessing and a curse for our mental health. We're animated. We're more animated. We show our feelings more than maybe the sports realm. That's my thought on that, I suppose.
00:55:19
Speaker
You know, just curious when I think about it. For example, today I was giving a presentation to dancers earlier on in the day. And I feel like when we talk about food issues, no one speaks up much. When I ask them, like, you know, what are some of the nutrition things you've heard of in the past? And I just want to learn about what they have and their thoughts.
00:55:40
Speaker
What you just said, Jen, makes me think of the show must go on. And so I wonder if your experiences with DCI and dance, what are some of those differences in ways that people reach out to you or some of the injuries or just some of the differences that you notice in working with these two groups?
00:56:03
Speaker
between sports, between performing arts. No, between dance and between dancers that you've worked with because you've also worked with ballet, correct? Okay. So ballet and DCI, what are some of the differences that you've noticed? A lot of the DCI was overuse, which is actually very similar to dance as well. So I can't even make those difference. I mean, they're very similar in regards to injuries and
00:56:30
Speaker
Like you said, the show must go on. So sometimes they don't want to talk to you because they're scared you're going to take them out. But I feel like I've built enough trust in them to know like, hey, I'm here to work with you. I'm not here fighting against you. So if we can modify what we're doing, or if we can just take a little break and then step back in, I'd rather you do that now than
00:56:51
Speaker
only be able to stay for a little bit longer because we're developing a stress injury or something like that. But I don't know. I feel like they're very similar to me, especially when you compare like color guard to dancers. Yeah, they're very similar. But I've had a lot of injuries with every caption. So they do come to me. I think they trust me at this point. So one of the things we haven't covered yet is like the preseason
00:57:19
Speaker
conditioning or like the way these performers become better performers because one of the things I was always thinking about watching marching bands was watching tuba players and you know watching folks who have you know heavier instruments and others walking around for hours and hours and hours and some when they want to play probably get the DCI and realize they're not strong enough to you know handle it or they need to have their endurance improve their strength training improved or whatever
Pre-season Conditioning and Resources
00:57:46
Speaker
it is. So how do you guys work with them and try and become a better performer?
00:57:52
Speaker
One thing that, again, it goes, we have such a wide variety of age ranges and we have such a right, I mean, between male, female, the age ranges, difference, the different skill sets for each section, brass, percussion, color guard. One of the things we've really found success with is allowing students options in their own routine, like guiding a path to increased interest. Because again, we can lay out a great plan for each instrument
00:58:20
Speaker
But if students don't do it or they fall behind, they aren't prone to catch up and then they would come in completely unprepared. So by allowing flexibility and then using Facebook, social media, Slack, different groups where students share their triumphs, like, oh my God, we have really had to work hard on understanding that it's not the time of your mile that's important.
00:58:46
Speaker
it's the fact that you were on the treadmill today reinforcing those things which it is really different with each group of students in that way. So that's, I don't know that that's a great answer but what I can say is so we have a staff member guide that here's what we want you to do to increase your activity levels so that they're paced in a way that they're prepared for summer and I believe that also helped
00:59:12
Speaker
Um, that, well, you, that helps identify issues that can come up before tour. So when we have those issues come up and they communicate them, that leads to greater benefit in the summer. And, but I think all these different small pieces have really added up to that. Um, I may, and I don't know if there's a better way to do that. That's one we keep changing as we go forward. I looking at gender Steve going.
00:59:38
Speaker
You all might have a better answer. Well, I think one of the things I've noticed though, too, over the years, early on when there was no real structured program or advice given out in the preseason, it's kind of like what you see in the military. Three weeks in to camp, you'd see all the shin splints and all the stress fractures show up. We used to see bucket loads of them that third week of camp, and then you'd have, you know,
01:00:05
Speaker
20 kids having to sit out or pace themselves back in and things like that. Since doing programs like this where you have sections working together and encouraging each other, the number of kids that we see, and Jen, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the number of stress injuries like that that we see in that third week or so has gone down a lot. I mean, you're still gonna see it, but it's a fraction of what we see.
01:00:35
Speaker
I think too, and that's where I got into the, well, and also, and when we were speaking to musicians, we would say, go run a mile. And then a student who had just had a bone removed from his foot like three weeks ago, you know, or had said to me like, Vicki, I can't run yet. And I'm like,
01:00:52
Speaker
Are you supposed to be running at all? So like with a musician or a student who hasn't been an athlete, we will say, we want you to jog or walk or run a mile because we have to be that literal. And some students just hate running. Well, they can use swimming as a replacement. So instead of us dictating exactly what in what way, some young men, especially we have a group that loves doing weightlifting.
01:01:22
Speaker
Other students just like standing, holding their tube as they do Netflix. So again, I'd say one way that we've found more success with it is letting students do something, record that activity and report it. So we're still able to monitor it. And it's our visual instructors that have helped with that. But that helps us understand why a student may or may not be successful come move in time.
01:01:52
Speaker
It would be a great research project for somebody to look into and figure out how to train these kids. One of the things I always harp on, the estimates are there's over 5 million kids in marching band to it, like 250,000 in college marching band and 5,000 in drum corps. And in history right now, I think we're up to 35 peer reviewed articles in literature. That's it. And so, you know, it's hard to make judgments about, you know, anything, whether it works or not.
01:02:22
Speaker
Um, it's obviously, you know, ripe for research. If anybody is out there and wants to do it. Now, where are some of the resources that athletes, um, in drum core or even athletes that are interested in joining drum core, um, can look for like, what are some of the resources websites that they can go to for, for more information?
01:02:54
Speaker
I would say, well, for some of the medical stuff, we try to get it on the Athletes in the Arts website. And if people are interested that are health care providers in joining the Marching Arts Safety and Health Group, you can go to the DCI website. There should be a link on there where you can submit your background and it'll be vetted and you'll be invited to join if you have.
01:03:25
Speaker
if you're interested in doing it. Wonderful. And I know we have on the athletes in the arts website as well. We have a few fact sheets for, um, athletes, uh, in marching arts and in drum Corps, and they cover hydration, nutrition, um, just strategies when traveling and they are excellent resources for, for any athletes out there and, and educators.
01:03:52
Speaker
Anything, especially from athletes in the arts and MASH is through DCI. Those have been, I believe, the most legitimate resources that I'm aware of. There are other sites that might be out there, but understanding the background or the vetting or the detail is not
01:04:18
Speaker
I don't really always understand or students may not know the legitimacy to the same extent. That's one thing that's been so valuable about athletes in the arts and then the MASH materials. And we direct a lot of those specifically to our students when they're available. Excellent. Anything else you guys want to talk about? We're right at the point now where we wrapped the show up.
01:04:44
Speaker
I feel deflated. It is fun to understand how far we've come in a short time, but there is still so much to be done.
01:04:59
Speaker
its research, just creating common understanding. There's so many different aspects to what we do. I think that's what is a daunting task in drum corps, particularly. But even though the drum corps examples might be to one, an extreme intensity, I still think they are relevant to every high school marching band and college marching band student across the country.
01:05:28
Speaker
to dancers, to color guards, to winter drum lines. But this is now, people have careers in what is a year-round activity, but really through their school, through WGI, through DCI. And that's where I just am hoping that we can continue in conversations and keep improving with what we're doing. I would really like this summer to get monitors on a student on a higher level
01:05:55
Speaker
than our grant had provided for us, for example. Because I think even as I walk through the details and the demands, the last study, when was it, Steve, 20 years ago? 2014, I think, 2013, 2014. When was the Indiana? Oh, that Indiana one. That was 2001, I think. Maybe even earlier than that.
01:06:24
Speaker
Dr. Rock wanted us to get the catapult system. Uh, but we didn't know like, cause it, that monitor looks like a sports bra and we didn't know if it would impact their tan lines. They're fiercely proud of their tan lines. That's how I got them to wear the heart rate strap. Cause I said that would be a tan line. Nobody else had. I helped for more research out there too. I mean, like you said, since 2001, um,
01:06:49
Speaker
And my math when I was being my master's, my thesis was actually on drum core. So it has a very special place in my heart. So yeah. In my mind, this is amazing how much you've done so far because just the
01:07:02
Speaker
you know, the level of care that you put into all the performers with DCI and Job Corps in general, and all the work you've done so far is immense. And you should be commended for that because there's lots of organizations I've seen that have barely a clue of what's going on with their kids. And you know, you've set a pretty high bar, even though you may have always, we're always discussing these things, there's always more to do. What you've done so far, I mean, your own concussion protocol is like still things that we work with,
01:07:31
Speaker
with other groups because they still think like, well, it's not a big deal. Well, you clearly know it's a big deal. So we all know it's a big deal. But so I think you should be commended for everything you've done so far. I think it's amazing. Yeah, it's it's I would say in just a little over a decade of me doing this, I'm surprised how far we've come. Really, I look back and think those kids where they said it's, you know, three days and I go home and the type of stuff that came in, I
01:08:01
Speaker
My jaw just drops, like I said, in 12 years or so since I first saw those kids that were where we're at. So yeah, there's other things we can change. But I think, yeah, we're a long way there too. And I have to praise all the other people that are part of the Marching Arts Safety and Health Group. Some of those people have been doing what I'm doing for 20, 30, 40 years.
01:08:29
Speaker
One of them I think we should mention too is a podiatrist who every year comes up with a shoe list for drum corps. So he goes to Kohl's, he goes to other stores and finds shoes that are appropriate for the activity and says, you need to get these. And if you're marching six to 13 miles a day, these kids in three months will go through two or three pairs of shoes.
01:08:57
Speaker
And if they don't have the proper shoe type on or they have worn out shoes on, they're going to get an overuse injury more commonly. So having that list out and everybody looks forward to it now, having that list has been great.
01:09:15
Speaker
just little resources like those that make such a big difference. And I feel like also just bringing so much more awareness to the sport for people who may not be aware of what it takes to be an athlete in drum core. And that's a lot of what Steve and I do with the podcast is our goal is to just
01:09:34
Speaker
spread all the information out there and have people learn about it and want to learn about it and understand that within the arts there are so many different pieces that are doing that are expending so much energy and are just the same as athletes and deserve all the same attention as
01:09:55
Speaker
you know, like a football player or soccer player or any other sport. So I hope that in the next coming years, more awareness does come to the sport and that you guys have all the resources that you need that help support them on all different levels of their health.
01:10:12
Speaker
I really appreciate the patience and support that each of you even offer us and by drawing the attention in detail. And if I'm even speaking with other band directors too, there are great resources in your community you might not have connected with. And one thing I like to say is to never underestimate the value of the common cause in that way. And that's where it's...
01:10:38
Speaker
It can be fun. We all learn a lot.
Conclusion and Thanks
01:10:41
Speaker
But I appreciate your guys' support and patience and investment in what it is our students do. I mean, it makes a tremendous difference. And for us, again, I just go back to that simple thing of, you know, it might have been a dozen year-ending injuries to one per year. That's huge.
01:10:59
Speaker
Vicki, Jennifer, Steve, thank you so much for being on our show today. We really appreciate it. Thank you for all your time and expertise and what you do, and we hope to talk to you soon. Thank you. Thanks for having us. Thank you. Thank you. And thank you again, Yasi, another great show. Of course, thank you. Remember, if you like what you hear, please leave a review and click subscribe to get all of our episodes delivered to you free. For Yasi Ansari, this is Stephen Karaginas, and this has been the Athletes in the Arts podcast.