This story was written by Lia Salvatierra, our new Education Reporter. Find more of Lia’s reporting here. Do you have an NKY education story? Email lsalvatierra@linknky.com.
Junior Abdul Haseeb raised his white-gloved hands over a field of students and their instruments shining beneath the Friday afternoon sun.
“Next week is our first big show in many weeks,” Haseeb told the group. “And we’re gonna rock it,” he shouted.
“5-6-7-8!” the group shouted back before music pierced the air.
The Holmes High School marching band wasn’t preparing for a competition. Instead, the arrangement of students were rehearsing for a friendly regional student showcase, the Goshen Warrior Band Festival, and a rival home football game later that night. After a few more runs, Band Director Conrad Krieger pauses the practice for students to dole out a round of high fives to one another.
It’s been four years since Krieger decided to break from the school marching band’s long, decorated competitive tradition and doubled participation with students who joined for its culture.
When Krieger joined Holmes in 2019, its music program — once home to one of the most recognized marching bands in the state — had largely dried up. All that remained of the music program were small concert band and choir classes, a marching band with fewer than 15 students and cases of competition trophies from years past — next to a letter of recognition from former U.S. President Gerald Ford.
Though the Holmes High School Marching Band’s proud tradition remains preserved in glass cases lining the band room, it’s been traded for a new kind of tradition under Krieger’s leadership — one of inclusivity no matter a student’s music background.
Krieger said he ultimately decided to convert to a non-competitive marching band after speaking with the Boone County High School band director, who also leads that type of band. Krieger was sold on what he saw as a better way to serve Holmes students: cutting back on an intense practice schedule, eliminating the cost of new uniforms and materials each year and opening the door for including more students, no matter their musical background. The band also includes middle schoolers.
“What I determined was the amount of time and money and baseline skill that it requires to be successful (as a competitive marching band) was not obtainable and not in our students’ best interest,” Krieger said. “The new tradition is music for all.”
Since starting as band director, Krieger has not only nearly doubled the marching band program and concert band class rosters, but also grown the music program by adding three new classes. Students can master the basics in a high school beginning band class, learn guitar and rock music in a modern band class that’s bursting at the seams and enroll in a dual-credit music theory course with Northern Kentucky University,
Senior Collin Konkright told LINK nky he originally joined the Holmes’ music program because his mom was in the marching band during its heyday.
After hedging for two years and joining as a sophomore, he ended up finding a knack for multiple instruments, a desire to study to become a music teacher like Krieger, and a family.
“The band, it’s kind of like a family in a sense,” Konkright said.
“A lot of people here, I can see some of them think of Krieger as a father figure. Personally in some ways, I do too,” Konkright said. “I don’t even have a dad, so he’s the closest.”
Konkright has enrolled in nearly every music class available, including serving as a peer tutor for the high school beginning band class.
Sophomores Sasha Hutson and Jake Canter also both called the band a family. Hutson moved from a school with a large, competitive marching band and said she was so relieved to join Holmes’ program. Canter said the band is who he falls back on when things get tough.
“It was the first group of people to really accept me for, you know, who I am,” Canter said.
Canter added that a smaller band offers more chances for students to lead, something Krieger champions within his program. Haseeb, who Krieger named as the marching band’s drum major, joined two years ago with no music experience, but a desire to be part of the band culture he’d been hearing about from his peers.
“It made me feel like if I want to have a positive impact and show Bulldog spirit, I should join band,” he said.
During the Friday rehearsal, Haseeb left his perch where he was conducting to comfort one of the band’s newer members, who had stepped away from rehearsal upset.
“It’s really beautiful,” he said of his new position as drum major.
“Because I see students who make mistakes, and they’re not complaining about their mistakes, they’re fixing them,” he said.
“They’re learning from it, I see people getting exhausted, but they keep going. I see people hustling up and down, accountability all that kind of stuff, and the biggest thing I see is people supporting each other,” Haseeb said.
“It actually teaches me more than what I’m saying up there (to them),” he said.
