Photo by J. Adrian Wylie
A new U-M dorm is rising on the Michigan Marching Band’s longtime home at Elbel Field, but director John Pasquale is over-the-moon happy with the new Elbel Field a block away.
American Campus Communities, which the U-M hired to build the dorm on the old field, is also “acting as the developer and owner’s representative” emails Colleen Mastony, U-M’s assistant vice president of public affairs. In turn, Pasquale says ACC “asked us to design a field that would meet our needs and that’s state of the art,” says Pasquale.
“Our color guard, or flag section, they have their own needs,” he says. “Our drum line has its own specific needs. The wind players have their own specific needs. So we just brought the entire team together over a couple of months” to develop a plan.
They came up with an $18.2 million facility that is actually “two fields instead of one,” says Pasquale, now in his twelfth year as the band’s director. “On the primary field, the turf matches the turf in the Big House, identically. All the landmarks. All the numbers. The endzones. Everything matches the Big House.”
So why have a second? “We have an audition process for every football game,” Pasquale explains. This year’s band has 396 members, but only about 235 “make the block” to perform on the field during the pregame show, and 276 at halftime. While the block practices for those shows, the rest can be “working on marching fundamentals on that secondary field,” which is “about 60 percent of the full field.”
Those drills used to take place “on a grass field adjacent to the old baseball diamond, and it was muddy, it was uneven, and when they mowed, the yard lines got erased,” Pasquale says.
The new artificial turf “will always be excellent and in pristine condition. We even have a goal post in the south end zone so the drum major can practice the goal post toss and not have to be in the stadium, which is great.”
The old field had a portable audio system “that we would wheel out for every rehearsal,” he says. Now, speakers “cover the entire complex, so that I can talk to both fields at the same time. But we [also] have the capability to be able to only talk to the primary field or only talk to the secondary field, or both.”
Then there are the cameras, which can “stream live video from the field to the video board that’s in the north end zone.” It can be recorded, and “we also have the capability to stream live performance videos from the field directly to the students’ phones so they’re able to watch themselves march in real time, which is incredible from an instructional perspective.”
Related: New Dorms at Last
The Michigan Marching Band
On quiet nights, the band’s practices can be heard a mile away, but many fans and band alumni want to get closer. For generations they gathered at the old Elbel field to watch and listen, and they’ll be able to do so again at Elbel 2.0. “Bleachers are currently in place,” Mastony writes. “Band practices and activities are open to the public.”
The new field occupies the former Fingerle lumberyard, and construction was complicated by the underground presence of Allen Creek, which in heavy rains often flooded the area. The new field was originally supposed to open a year ago, but had to be re-engineered to improve its drainage.
The main entrance is on S. Fifth Ave. near John St. Vehicle access has been limited since the intersection of E. Madison and S. Fifth Ave. closed for utility work in January, but after many delays, it’s scheduled to reopen at the end of August.
“Moving” Elbel has touched deep memories for the band’s alums. “So much of my life occurred on “Elbel Field 1.0,” emails Gail Stout, who was in the band in 1978–80. “I met my husband on Elbel Field. He played tenor sax, and I played trumpet, and on the first day of band camp I marched right behind him.” (John Stout arranged his first MMB show as a student and continued until his death in 2017.) Practicing there with the alumni band before last year’s homecoming game, “was absolutely bittersweet,” Stout writes. Yet now, “I’m THRILLED about this [new] field.”
So is Pasquale. “There is nothing that parallels it in college marching [band facilities] in the country,” he says. “We’re still tweaking some punch list things, which are to be expected, of course, with any construction project. But the field’s ready to go, and so is the band.”
