Cruising into Blacksville on a football Friday night at Clay-Battelle High School.
Actually, the building houses grades 6 through 12, making it more of a middle school-high school under one roof.
The school is small, but it gets it done.
That’s evident by the decibels emanating from the artificial turf of the Joe and Louie Statler Athletic Complex, where the Cee-Bees play their home games.
Said field sits below the school parking lot, meaning all that sound generated during the course of the game rises up – and the first sound one hears, is almost always the sound generated by the Cee-Bee Marching Band.
The cadence of the drumline.
The pulse of Friday nights in autumn.
Clay-Battelle’s marching band was on the receiving end of the sonic spectrum last month, when it heard a sound equally pleasing.
That was when the West Virginia Secondary School Activities Commission announced the band was receiving its 2022-23 Academic Achievement Award, for netting the highest collective grade point average of any marching band in the Mountain State for the fall term.
That cumulative 3.82 GPA was music to the ears of band director Valerie Huffman, she told Monongalia County Board of Education members this past week.
“I’m truly proud of what they do,” Huffman said during the brief recognition event at the start of the BOE meeting.
Relatively speaking, what those band members do, the director said, is a lot.
They aren’t just in band, she said.
They play on sports teams and act in school theatrical productions.
Some of them are literal cheerleaders, yelling their choreographed allegiance to Cee-Bee varsity basketball teams.
And that’s even as they are rehearsing for the spring concert and pulling late hours to get those papers in on time for their advanced placement courses.
The seniors remember the height of COVID in 2020, when the WVSSAC said no marching bands would play at football games that season – only to be overruled by Gov. Jim Justice, who said it just isn’t a football game without one.
Winning such an academic award, Principal David Cottrell said, means measuring up against schools across West Virginia – with all the socioeconomic implications.
Especially, he said, the ones with the 300-member bands, and all the decibels and dollars they bring to the field show.
The Marching Cee-Bees show what happens, he said, with hard work, talent and a whole town as cheering section.
“It truly is a village on the western end of the county,” the principal said.
“We’re unique, with our 6-12 configuration. We’re always going up against the big schools.”
BOE member Mike Kelly, a University High graduate who marched with the Hawks band, couldn’t wait to add to the tune.
A handful of band members were at the school district’s central office for the meeting, and he gave a quick remark to them, as they showed the plaque they won and the banner under which they can now unfurl during the field show.
“Hey,” he said, smiling. “I love marching bands. I’m a band geek from way back.”
The Cee-Bee members smiled back at the compliment.
TWEET@DominionPostWV
