On Saturday, Oct. 3rd, Slippery Rock University hosted their 2026-27 high school marching band day on campus.
Cara Campbell and Haylee McDonald spoke to The Rocket to discuss their insights on how the day went overall.
Campbell is a freshman music education major, and she plays piccolo in the marching band. McDonald is a freshman early childhood education and special education dual major, and she plays trumpet in the marching band.
Campbell and McDonald spoke as to what this event actually is.
“We pretty much just invite just a bunch of highschoolers grades 9-12 to the university. They played a bunch of stand tunes with us and we did a different halftime show so they could be included with it. We also played some of our stands during it as well,” Campbell said.
“We give them a bit of a taste as to what a college marching band would be like versus how different it is in high school. This event is kind of a persuasion to get highschoolers to stay in marching band,” McDonald said.
This was both Campbell and McDonalds’s first times serving as members for this event. However, for McDonald, a lot of people from her section expressed to her that they had gone to high school band day in the past, and it really changed whether or not they were going to do college marching band.
Overall, both Campbell and McDonald thoroughly expressed that the high school band day was a success.
“There were a lot of people that said they were liking Slippery Rock even more by the end of it,” McDonald said.
“I definitely liked my little group of piccolos that came up from the high school,” Campbell said. “They were very nice and they were very outgoing. They very much enjoyed yelling during the game.”
“I think I just liked seeing people’s reactions change from the beginning of the day to the end of the day. Whereas all of my trumpets were shy and not talkative in the beginning, they all had bright smiles by the end,” McDonald said.
In addition, if there are any highschoolers who are considering high school band day events at nearby colleges, both Campbell and McDonald encourage students to participate.
