MOORPARK : Funds Sought for Prize-Winning Band

Five years ago, the Moorpark High School marching band had about 17 members, resident Mary Hill said.

“If the trumpet player didn’t show up, that blew the brass section,” said Hill, the parent of a former drum major. “It was pretty pathetic.”

This year, the band has 47 members and is winning honors, including six first-place trophies at a recent tournament in Antelope Valley, said Charles Adams, treasurer of the school’s band boosters club.

Now, band director John Lake, his students and their parents are faced with the challenge of raising enough money to sustain the band’s growth.

Students coming up from the eighth grade are expected to increase the band’s size by more than half next year to 75 students, said Adams’ wife, Carol, president of the boosters club. These new members may not have instruments to play or uniforms to wear, she said.

“The equipment is starting to fall apart,” Carol Adams said. The drums are in such poor shape, she said, that “every time you tighten them to tune them, something breaks.” And the band’s single tuba is precariously held together with screws, she said.

Although band members buy smaller instruments for themselves, schools usually furnish larger instruments such as tubas, which cost $3,000 each, Carol Adams said.

A few years ago, said trumpet player Thomson Nguy, 17, “we were a second-rate band playing second-rate instruments.” Now, said the senior, “we’re a first-rate band playing second-rate instruments.”

Parents are also worried about finding uniforms for new members. Although the band owns 80 gold- and-green uniforms, “I can’t guarantee that those 75 students will fit into those 80 uniforms,” Adams said. Some uniforms, which cost up to $500 each, could probably be altered, she said.

The band’s budget from the district has been frozen at about $2,000 over the last few years, Lake said. The booster club aims to raise about $40,000 this year, contrasted with $10,000 to $15,000 in previous years, Carol Adams said.

So far, they have raised about $6,500, Charles Adams said. “Being a small community, there’s very little to draw from,” he said.

By comparison, the booster club for the 130-member band at Thousand Oaks High School raises about $44,000 each year, Thousand Oaks band director Bill Hoehny said. With a population of more than 100,000, Thousand Oaks is about four times the size of Moorpark.