marching band is lucky if they’re able to practice there a few times a year.

if it's anything like band at my texas highschool when I was growing up, you can only play an instrument at school if you're also in marching band. there were no alternative options, your entire music agenda was about marching for the football players with some competition solo playing once or twice a year as an afterthought. No practice on the grass football field, ever. Practice was only ever on a black asphalt parking lot, in texas heat.

I quit playing my instrument after highschool because i perceived it only as a tool to celebrate the dumbest, shittiest people at school. I'm mad about it still twenty years later because if literally anyone in the music program in my texas education had ever even hinted at the idea that the football auxiliary marching band members could get together outside of playing john philip fucking sousa in a dumb outfit, we could have created our own music and even bands.