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By Beth Roberts
beth@uga.edu
 For many years, the motto of UGA’s marching band has been:
There’s nothing finer in the land
Than the Georgia Redcoat marching band.
During halftime at the Homecoming game Oct. 14, the band will receive proof of the accuracy of that motto in the form of the Sudler Trophy, the highest honor a collegiate marching band can receive.
The Sudler Trophy is awarded each year by the John Philip Sousa Foundation to the “college or university marching band which has demonstrated the highest of musical standards and  innovative marching routines and ideas, and which has made important contributions to the advancement of the performance standards of college marching bands over a period of several years.”
Both Dwight Satterwhite, UGA’s director of bands, and associate director John Culvahouse emphasize that requirement of longevity.
“This award is being given to every person who’s ever worn the uniform,” Satterwhite says.
And Culvahouse adds that UGA has had fewer years to develop the national reputation the Sudler Trophy recognizes than other, much older, college bands, like those in the Big Ten.
“The first national recognition came in 1976,” he says, “when Roger Dancz led the Redcoat Band in Jimmy Carter’s inaugural parade.”
UGA is the 19th winner of the Sudler Trophy--and the first from the SEC.
Each September, nomination forms go to every U.S. marching band director at a four-year school that participates in NCAA football. From those nominations, the award  committee at the John Philip Sousa Foundation produces a ballot on which those same band directors vote for the Sudler winner for the coming year.
“That’s one of the things that makes this award special,” Satterwhite says. “To be considered by the committee you have to have received a substantial number of nominations from your colleagues at other colleges.”
“And for your colleagues to even know you exist, you have to have developed a national reputation,” Culvahouse says. “For example, they’ve heard our recordings, our CDs, when they were looking for ideas for their own band, and so they know what we’re doing.”
Culvahouse says he thinks they’ve been particularly successful at combining the old with the new. “I tell people that we are very proud of all the old traditions,” he says, “but that we are also very proud of our many new traditions.”
And they know something of those traditions--Culvahouse has been here for 10 years and Satterwhite for 19, and they’ve both been active in college bands since their own undergraduate days.
“There’s a special bond with the students and the alumni and your constituency that doesn’t happen anywhere else,” Satterwhite says. “I loved my college experience so much I wanted it to last forever.” |
