LYNN — When you’re at a high school football game this season, and halftime beckons, it may be your time to get a couple of slices of pizza, or to socialize, or perhaps do something else.
Chances are, you’re not sitting in the stands taking in the band concert. Lynn English senior Erik Whittier wishes more people would.
Whittier, a drummer and drum major, is fully committed to an aspect of football that was once part of the pageantry of a Saturday afternoon, but has now fallen by the wayside in a sea of halftime talking heads and highlights.
“Sometimes,” he said, “I wish there was a little more focus on it. At halftime, when we start to play, not a lot of people pay attention to us.”
The high school band, however, is no different than the high school football team when it comes to the work and preparation involved in putting on a good show. Whittier is in the middle of all of it.
“I guess you could say I’m the captain of the band, or the closest thing there is to a captain,” Whittier said Thursday afternoon as he prepared for Friday night’s Lynn Classical-Gloucester game at Manning Field.
That’s right. An English High drum major is playing at a Classical game. That’s because the band consists of students from the three Lynn public schools — which sometimes causes logistical impediments when it comes to preparation.
“Students have to be bused to wherever we’re practicing,” he said, “and it takes a while to get everyone together, and to get everyone in their positions.”
But when they do, Whittier is front and center, splitting his time between playing and directing.
He’s always liked drumming from the time he was in elementary school.
“I’ve been doing music since the fourth grade,” he said, “and the first instrument I got was the drum. I fell in love with it, and I’ve been doing it ever since.”
He began studying the way classic drummers like Buddy Rich and John Bonham played. And while he’s recently toyed with the idea of playing the ukulele, drums are his thing. When he was old enough, he joined the band, and knew instantly that his ultimate high school goal was to be the drum major.
“I saw the seniors doing it, and knew that was something I would want to do,” he said.
Lest anyone think of Whittier as a one-dimensional student, he swims in the winter for the Bulldogs, and, for good measure, he is on the math team.
In fact, said Whittier, his love of math centers him when all else is swirling around him.
“I find it relaxing,” said Whittier, who is taking advanced-placement calculus this year. “And I also find the challenge of it a lot of fun. We go to tournaments and we’re each given math problems to solve, and you get a point for each one you solve right.”
But make no mistake. His overriding passion is band. He hopes to go to UMass-Amherst next fall and major in music education. And yes, he wants to play in the Minuteman band. He became interested in the school when he attended UMass Band Day last year, where 100 different bands put on exhibitions, and got to watch the Minuteman band perform their halftime routine.
“That’s where I got the inspiration to go there and join,” he said. “I’ll be going through the early-acceptance process soon.”
Whittier carries a 3.76 GPA, good enough to rank 16th out of a class of nearly 350 seniors. Between studies, swimming, band and his math team activities, there isn’t much room for anything else in his life. But that’s OK, he says.
“I guess you could say I’m fully committed to it,” he said.