Band Members Are Learning the Drill at Training Camp : Education: It’s hours of grueling hard work. But everyone agrees the discipline and teamwork is rewarded on--and off--the field.

Every weekday at 8 a.m., the Thousand Oaks High School squad storms the grassy athletic field to begin six grueling hours of preseason training. They practice formations, perform drills and if the mercury tops 90 degrees, tough. Because this is not a sport for the faint of heart.

This is band camp.

“It’s just as rigorous as being on a sports team,” Thousand Oaks High band director Bill Hoehne said of his three-week intensive training program.

“The kids are being tasked mentally and physically,” he said. “The minute they walk in the gate at Thousand Oaks High School, I put them to work.”

The late-summer ritual is performed by high school marching bands across Ventura County, who use the last weeks of August to prepare students for fall parades and football halftime shows.

“It’s serious business,” Newbury Park High School band director Tim Hoey said. “It’s every bit as tough as football training.”

The Newbury Park band started its training camp Monday and will practice eight hours a day for about two weeks. The Simi Valley High School band also started its two-week camp this week.

“That’s probably about average for bands in the county,” Hoey said. “It’s really like a sport. I hate to downplay the artistic side, but that is part of it.”

*

Last week, when temperatures soared into the high 90s, the sweaty Thousand Oaks High Lancers marched around campus despite the oppressive heat.

“Our clothes were sticking to us,” sophomore trombonist Laura Gantz said. “It was disgusting.”

A second-year member of Thousand Oaks High’s color guard, 14-year-old Karey Williams is pumping iron in her spare time to strengthen her slender frame for upcoming parades and competitions.

“I have to lift weights to gain muscle because I’m so small,” she said.

Although the training is demanding on her time as well as her muscles, Karey said being a band member has taught her to work with others and boosted her self-esteem.

“It’s a lot of hard work,” she said. “(But) it teaches you to work with other people.”

During one of the frequent water breaks during a recent afternoon marching practice, sophomore Thomas Akers likened the three-week experience to military training.

“It’s almost like boot camp,” the French horn player explained. “But by the end of band camp you’re ready for the school year.”

Beyond the physical training, the camps are designed to help ease students back into school and orient incoming freshmen to high school.

In between morning marching drills and afternoon music practices, the older members of the Thousand Oaks band lead incoming freshmen on campus tours, showing them where their classes will be when school starts Sept. 8.

“They will have been here a month,” Hoehne said of his freshman players, “and the other ninth-graders are going to be running into walls.”

Unlike some of his classmates, 15-year-old Thomas as a freshman was able to meet students through band camp before classes started.

“I came in last year and knew 140 people and they knew five,” he said.

The older band members also serve as role models for the younger students, Hoehne said. “All these ninth-graders are associating with 12th-graders who are going to college next year,” he said. “That has proven to be an asset.”

The rigorous preseason training sessions are also an asset academically, Hoehne said, teaching students discipline that applies in and out of the classroom.

“There’s been a valedictorian in our band every year that I’ve been here,” Hoehne said of his six-year tenure at Thousand Oaks High.

*

One of about 80 parents who contribute time for fund-raising and other activities to boost the Lancer band, Karey’s mother, Mary Litzsinger, said the band program provides students with an education they sometimes do not receive in their academic classes.

“From a parent’s perspective, it teaches them teamwork and camaraderie,” she said. “I think it provides them with a foundation that is really necessary today.”

Thousand Oaks High has one of the largest marching bands in Ventura County with 150 members and is considered to be among the top bands in Southern California--a reputation the musicians hope to uphold.

“It’s very demanding,” said Megan Young, 16, who is captain of the color guard. “(But) even after all the practices, the feeling of performing is worth it.”