A new makeover is coming to the Bowling Green State University (BGSU) Falcon Marching Band (FMB) practice field.
FMB Director Jonathan Waters says he’s grateful for how safe the new field will be for students.
“The new field will have no holes, it’ll be padded…We’ll have fewer injuries, fewer twisted ankles, all of that kind of thing,” Waters said.
FMB members like senior Brendan Stein are also excited to have a field with no holes.
“We’ll be able to march without having to worry about holes that we’ve dug into the ground,” Stein said.
Some other features of the new practice field are water stations, lights and a new teaching tower.
“There’s a 40 foot tall, beautiful steel teaching tower, painted brown and orange, that is the centerpiece and we can use that as a place to teach the band. I can see drill from up high and see where students are lined up…,” Waters said.
Senior Madison Allman could not pick one favorite feature of the new field.
“The water, I think, is gonna be huge. I also like that it’s going to have lights. I think that’s going to make it really nice in case it gets a little darker,” Allman said.
The project started in June with the idea of creating a better field for the marching band and other student organizations.
“It’s lined not only for football, but it’s lined for lacrosse and soccer. Several sports can play on the field and it has multiple colors of lines and lines for different sports,” Waters said.
To pay for this new practice field, Waters created a campaign and had many donors.
“We went into partnership with the advancement office here on campus…We had a lot of people come forward to donate, large and small and the donations came in because people wanted to see the Falcon Marching Band have a new home,” Waters said.
The new practice field is going to be on the west side of the Perry Field House and the ribbon cutting for the new field is Sept. 13 at 1 p.m.
Waters started his dream of this new practice field when he got to BGSU and it’s becoming a reality.
“The dreaming phase began when I arrived here on campus three years ago…it took a while to get everybody involved and then we raised the money and then the groundbreaking was in June of this year and they’ve been working overtime and it’s nearly done now,” Waters said.
FMB members believe with the new practice field, the band will be even better.
“With resources like this now available to us, I think we’ll be able to perform better, having a better place to practice needs a better place to perform,” Allman said.
