Fund Sam's Journey with Santa Clara Vanguard

Hello! I'm Sam, I'm 19 years old and currently attending California State University, Long Beach (CSULB) as a music education major with a focus in brass and with a psychology minor, and I'm happy to announce that I will be marching with the Santa Clara Vanguard (SCV) as a mellophone for the 2025 season! This has been a dream of mine ever since I discovered the marching arts back in 2019, and I'm so happy to be making my past self proud.

If you are unaware, DCI (Drum Corp International) as stated on the DCI website is described as "Marching Music's Major League", this activity consists of marchers wielding brass instruments ranging from trumpet, Mellophone, Baritone, Euphonium, and Tuba/Contra, Percussion instruments such as Bass, Quads, Snares, Cymbals, maybe even Flubs. There is also the color guard who act as dancers on the field wielding flags, tossing muskets and swords in unison to create unimaginably spectacular visuals. This is also accompany by the pit which can consist of Marimbas, Xylophones, vibraphones, Timpani, keyboard and more axillary percussion, who act as a stationary wall of sound between the audience and the marchers.

All of this comes together in unison on a football field to create a spectacular sound and visual in the form of a thematic almost theater like production, often based off of a story, emotion, theme, book, movie, poem, ect. The best way ive found to explain it is almost like synchronized swimming on a football field, with some of the swimmers playing brass and percussion instruments, but its best to watch a couple of show yourself to understand what Drum Corp really is!

This activity requires rigorous pre-season training that I am currently going through along with mandatory weekly assignments and monthly weekend long fly out camps, after this starting May 27, Spring training up in Idaho will begin, lasting about a month until the tour around the US begins, all of this lasting three months with around 30+ shows until early August when we fly home from Indianapolis, with this comes a 5k living cost per member for food, housing, transportation, education, instrument repairs, costume production, prop production, new instruments, ect...

I was lucky enough to march last season with Gold Drum and Bugle Corp, which allowed me a nice introduction into the world of DCI, and I was also able to afford the entirety of the tour fees being around 5k+ outside of transportation fees. This year with being newly contracted with SCV, one of the best drum corps in the world and 7 time champion since its founding in 1967, is absolutely incredible, but funding has been harsher on me and i have been financially unstable doing what i can to pay for tour fees, again being around 5k+.

I have been able to get up to 3k and have paid that amount already, now i just need the remaining amount to be financially stable going in and coming back from tour, that's where I hope to used this platform to help raise money for me to not only march, not only to be one of the best in the world, but to follow my dreams! please consider supporting me on my journey, anything is greatly appreciated, and I will ensure to entertain you this season with SCV's 2025 production (its looking to REALLY cool)!!!