Merritt has Discovery band ready for football season
MADISON- Listen to the music and you can quickly tell that Jennie Merritt is building on the tradition of a great band program at Discovery Middle School. Merritt and some students gave a little sample of what was to come during home football games this season at a PTA fundraiser at Jack’s on Hwy. 72 in Madison on Friday.
Merritt has been at Discovery for 3 years. Before that she was band director at Madison County and taught at Central and Madison County elementary. Merritt played clarinet at Mountain Brook High School and at Alabama in the MDB.
“Madison is a special place,” Merritt said. “You get some hard-working, intelligent, well rounded students and it’s fun to teach here because you have a really supportive community and band parents and administration.
When all that comes together the kids really benefit so they succeed and our band has grown bigger and we’re excited about this year and the future.”
Discovery offers beginner, intermediate, and advanced level band classes. Merritt started sixth grade band after school once a week after sixth graders were moved to middle school. She also offers indoor drum line percussion, one of the few middle schools in Alabama to offer that.
She also teaches color guard to go along with the pep band that plays at Discovery home football games.
Merritt said that the Discovery pep band will number about 100 this year.
“We call it a pep band because we don’t do any drill or movement on the field. We do fun marching music. We have marching band instruments that they learn for the first nine weeks including drums.”
The band plays Swing and Victory the Notre Dame fight song which Discovery has adopted.
“It’s some pretty tough music to play so for middle school band kids to be at that level is amazing,” Merritt said.
Football games will start in a few weeks and the band with the color guard spinning their flags will entertain at halftime.
“Our DMS home games are a lot of fun and we invite fans to come out and see our football team and listen to the band play because they work really hard during the day. It’s a cool experience.”
The first home football game for Discovery is August 31 against Arab at 5 pm.
