Sandy Valley band learns fight songs for opposing teams

By Jordan Miller

MAGNOLIA – The 2020 fall football season has been different for high schools in Ohio, but possibly the most impacted asset of Friday night games has been the Governor’s decision to not allow bands to attend away football games due to COVID-19 reasons. 

Sandy Valley’s Band Director knows the importance of a road team having the support of their band at away games.

“With bands not being able to travel to away games, we realized that there was a void in the game-time experience that needed to be filled,” said Sandy Valley Band Director Craig Carnes. “We wanted to be able to offer the visiting fans some sort of normalcy to their game experience and the most appropriate thing seemed to be playing their fight song at pregame.”

To fill the void, Carnes and his staff took it upon themselves to teach the Sandy Valley band the fight songs of each opposing team the Cardinals will play at home, since the opposition is not allowed to have a band in attendance. He believes this is a form of unity.

“I think it is important to play these songs for the visitors as a sign of mutual respect for their team and their school,” said Carnes. “It shows that although we are opponents, we can still be united in some things.  In fact, the phrase "United We Band" is printed on the front of our band shirts for this year.”

Carnes wants to remind people that Sandy Valley’s band is still loyal to their beloved Cardinals, but they want to treat the visiting team fairly.

“Playing another team's fight song doesn't mean we love our team any less,” he said. “We just want to treat the visiting fans the way that we would want to be treated.”

Director Carnes said it didn’t take the Cardinals band too long to learn the other schools’ fight songs.

“Fortunately fight songs aren't very long, so it only takes us a few rehearsals to get them under our belt,” he said. “Some schools use the same fight song so we can get multiple performances out of learning one fight song.”

In total, the Cardinals have learned four different fight songs for the regular season games.