Eli J. Mapes
When The Pride of Oklahoma, The University of Oklahoma’s marching band, changed directors last season, it created a lot of media attention as alumni and students were not happy with the new director’s performance. This placed a lot of stress on The Pride’s leadership team, including Kyle Davey from the drumline.
Still today, articles from the OU Daily can be found on their website speaking of different sections within the band having different responses. For example, the tuba section completely boycotted a practice. Along with these articles, there are some other articles calling out President Boren for allowing the hire to happen. Even with all these articles, you never really heard anything about Davey’s drumline.
Although he did not believe it was the correct way to go, Davey said it got to the point within the band that they were speaking of overthrowing the band’s new leadership. Davey says that he felt that leading by example was the easiest way to get his section through the season, so he just tried to block out all the negative attention and focus on playing.
A member of his section, Hannah Dennis, noted his leadership throughout the season, as well as the entire leadership team. She says Kyle, “always did a good job keeping us motivated to focus on our music and producing the best show we could for the football game that week.”
Although many students are saying that they are now done marching with Pride as a result of last season’s drama, the new director, Justin Stolarik, is expected to stay at OU.
Drumline section leader Kyle Davey speaks about how he chose to deal with the change in the band’s leadership and how it affected him as a student. VIDEO: Eli J. Mapes (TRT: 1 minute)
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