Battle of the Bands: This high school marching band was voted best in the Midlands

The voters have spoken.

We asked readers of The State which Midlands high school has the best marching band. And the results weren’t even close.

Supporters of the Dreher High School marching band swamped the week-long online poll last week, and the Blue Devils ended up on top with 54%, or 76,038 votes.

Lexington High School was the runner-up with 22% of the vote. Twenty-six other local high schools just couldn’t muster the same level of online support; Richland Northeast led the rest of the pack with 5%.

More than 140,000 votes in total were recorded in the (admittedly unscientific) poll before it closed Sunday night.

Dreher drum majors Daniel Lacoste, Elizabeth Nobles and Darby Waund gathered Sunday at the Waffle House on Harden Street to count down to the end of the poll like it was New Year’s Eve.

“It’s a tradition,” said Waund, a senior. “On a game night or after a performance, we go to Waffle House to celebrate. So when we saw we were ahead, we had to meet to celebrate. It was like a final hurrah.”

As midnight approached, the band crew even counted down the end of the poll. “There were only a few other people there who looked at us like, ‘what on earth?’” Waund remembers. “One even said ‘Happy New Year.’”

The Dreher band showed its prowess when the Blue Devils placed seventh statewide in the 3A marching band competition in October.

“These kids are amazing, especially given everything that has been thrown at them in the last couple of years,” said Adrienne Grier, secretary of the Bands of Dreher Booster Club. “Their mission of keeping music alive during this pandemic was a light in so many dark spots in the community, and we are obviously very proud of their perseverance.”

Band members shared the poll with friends and family to boost the numbers, but even they were surprised by how quickly voting took off in Dreher’s favor.

“We just woke up one day and we were ahead by 10,000 votes,” Waund said.

“It felt really good,” said Lacoste, also a senior. “A lot of people support us, and we just got to see how many support us and what we do.”

The band members credit the band with giving them a ready-made friend group and an outlet to develop into young adults.

“I was really nervous (when I started), but people are nervous about things when they shouldn’t be,” said Nobles, a Dreher junior. Instead of being intimidating, a “super awkward” Nobles found band gave a boost to her confidence and social skills.

The COVID-19 pandemic put a halt to band members’ normal routine. Most competitions in 2020 were canceled. So the 2021 band season gave them a chance to re-connect and strut their stuff en route to placing in the state competition.

“I actually got to see people I was friends with every day,” Nobles said. “It was great. State was one of my best memories. I started crying when it was over.”

The band’s week-long lead in the poll gave rise to a new design idea for El Diablo, the nickname for the band’s equipment semi-trailer, Waund said.

“We had a running joke that if we won the poll, we would write on it ‘best marching band in the Midlands according to a State newspaper poll,’” Waund said.