Coastal Carolina University’s Chanticleer Regiment is celebrating their 20th anniversary by acknowledging how far they’ve come, and how much there’s left to learn.
The band has made it this far by following their motto, “Make it happen,” which according to Kristin Brickner, junior and conducting drum major, refers to the need to overcome challenges and make it happen no matter what.
Garrett Griffin, associate professor of music, has been the Director of Bands for six years now. Griffin said since starting this position, he has been working on things like consistency in terms of leadership and traditions.
“Every year we get closer [to consistency], every year we add things that kind of helps, that we’re hoping in ten years from now that are still in place,” Griffin said. “So we’re definitely getting much closer to the vision that we had for, you know, what the program could be.”
He said his main goal for the marching band has been to become larger than the band has ever been, and since speaking to the original members in the marching band from 2003, he thinks they’re excited about what the band is doing.
“We’ve started creating our own identity where we don’t, we don’t want to look or sound like [University of South Carolina] or Clemson, he said. “We kind of want to look and sound our own way which I feel like we’ve started doing.”
He said he thinks the alumni are noticing they can stand out in a lot of ways, maybe not in size, but through what they’re doing during halftime, which differs from what many other college programs are doing. However, the band stands at 97 members now, which he said is a significant increase from when he started six years ago.
Brickner said she does hope, going into her senior year, that the regiment will have more people in order to create a bigger sound and bigger impact on Coastal overall.
“Even in my three years here, it has changed so much. My first year was kind of lowkey, and then the second year was like ‘woah we’re going to London!’ There are way more people in the band now,” Brickner said.
Junior music education major and inline drum leader Grayson Emery agrees with Griffin and Brickner. Emery said his goal is for them to continue to get bigger, for the program to grow and the culture to really get solidified.
He said right now, their focus is on using relevant music and engaging with their audience as much as possible.
“We just like to have fun, we like to have like our audience have fun. And that’s our main goal, and that’s really the best thing that we’re good at,” Emery said.
