Listen to 16-year-old Zachary Blocker talk about one of his high school passions, and you’d probably think he’s a football player.

“After practice, you walk away sore, tired and thirsty,” Blocker says. “But after a competition, you feel no pain. You feel like you can go out and do anything. You’re not tired at all. It just pumps you full of adrenaline.”

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But Blocker isn’t Joe Quarterback, though he does perform on a football field. A tenor saxophone player, he’s talking about band. Blocker, a junior at Lake Highlands High School, is in both the marching and jazz bands.

Lake Highlands is well known for its band programs. The high school is one of only three in the United States that have received the prestigious Sudler Flag on two occasions under different directors, most recently last year. And they’ve performed three times in the last 30 years at the annual Midwest Conference in Chicago, where only four or five bands are chosen to play each year.

“The Lake Highlands band has had literally almost a 40-year experience of success, which is really unusual,” says Marion West, director of the LHHS band since 1991. “Some band programs come and go, but the Lake Highlands community is really fortunate, because the band program has stayed well known throughout the United States.”

Indeed, every marching season, the band goes to about three competitions and regularly places high among participants. This success is one of the main reasons kids such as Blocker enjoy band.

But there are other reasons why kids stay in band, things that will last much longer than any adrenaline rush or blue ribbon. For starters, most band kids hang out with other band kids. And, contrary to a lot of high school rumor, this isn’t because they’re all “geeks” or part of some secret cult. It’s because they spend so much time together.

Band season begins in August, when students spend two weeks prior to the school year practicing seven hours a day. After school starts, the grueling schedule (at least by any high school student’s standards) continues. Most are up by 6 a.m. and on the field for marching practice from 6:50-8:30 a.m. They have another period later in the day for band and, if they’re in jazz band like Blocker, two.

“We’re around each other so much, and most people start band at a young age,” says LHHS junior and oboist Amy Diggs. “So you set your friendships there, and having them near you so much, you go from there.”

“It become their second home,” says Robin Moffett, assistant band director at Lake Highlands Junior High, about the band hall.

She out to know. When Moffett was a junior in high school, her mother died. She moved from New York to Sulfur, La., to live with her father, whom she barely knew, and quickly added culture shock and stress to the grief she was already feeling.

“It was awful. I thought I was going to go crazy,” Moffett says. “I was about ready to absolutely pack it up.”

Luckily, she’d been playing the clarinet since the fourth grade and took it up at her new high school. It saved her, she says.

“You’re feeling so bad, and all of a sudden you’ve got 60 friends…good friends,” she says. “The only thing that was stable in my life then was band. It really helped me – the discipline and the kids. If it wasn’t for band, I’m not sure what would have happened to me.”

The tight-knittedness of any band program is one of the reasons why LHHS band parent president Julie Alexander is so devoted to it. Her older son, Travis, is in the University of Texas band, and 18-year-old Tyler plays alto sax at LHHS.

“With band you have the opportunity to really stay involved in your child’s life,” Alexander says. “Plus, you know all your kids’ friends, and I don’t think a lot of parents have that opportunity anymore. But I always know who they’ve hung with, and we’re talking about 150 neat kids. Are they perfect? No. Do they make mistakes? Yes. Are they good kids? Absolutely.”

Band directors say the program attracts smart, already-focused kids, and then teaches them a whole host of other traits necessary for success.

“The No. 1 thing, of course, is self-discipline. They learn to get up early. They develop the ability to schedule and the ability to multitask,” says West.

Lake Highlands resident Judy Hominick agrees. Three of her five kids are in band.

“The biggest thing my kids learn from being in a great band like Lake Highlands’ is perseverance and commitment,” she says. But she adds they learn other, potentially more important lessons as well. Band kids, she says, “are comfortable in their skin,” even in the face of being called “geeks” by other students.

“I think good self-esteem is the all-time important thing to possess,” she says. “Band gives that to the kids.”

Because of this, the LHHS band programs usually see their kids go on to succeed well beyond high school.

“They’re ready to meet the world at the college level,” West says. “They’re ready to assess priorities and make schedules and keep up with things and be self disciplined enough to go out and be successful when you have to depend on yourself for your own motivation.”

Not surprisingly, these are things band kids don’t take for granted.

“Band has taught me character and leadership,” Blocker says. “My freshman year, I looked up to the juniors and seniors, and now I’m leaving an impression on freshman and sophomores.”

“It’s taught me how to be more organized and focused,” Diggs says. And then there’s that dedication of having to wake up in the morning. Plus, they push you to do your best in practice and just be good.”

But while parents and teachers can go on and on about the outstanding character developed by band, the kids – being kids – will always bring it back to what it’s really about for them and, probably, what it should be about: the fun and the friendship.

“Most people in band want to be there,” Diggs says. “So when you say, ‘How many hours do you devote to it?’, it’s not one of those things you’re required to do; it’s that you want to. If you enjoy music, you’re sort of drawn to band, and what keeps you there is the people you meet and the things you do, the excitement of the competitions and the games.”

Adds Blocker: “You might get tired with it, it might be frustrating, but you keep pushing on. It shows a dedication.”

A dedication that pays off, says Alexander, who attends all of the competitions.

“We stand there and look at those kids waiting to hear their names,” she says of the parents. “And when their name is called, they’re jumping for the sky. Those mornings they didn’t want to get up, when they thought: Why am I doing this? They hear their name over the loud speaker, and all their hard work has paid off. That is their reward.”