For the North Central College Cardinal Marching Band, most of the weekend was spent on a bus. Forty-some hours to be exact.
The hours fell away, though, when they stepped out into the stadium.
Horns up. Cadence, go. Showtime.
Since 2019, North Central has appeared in the NCAA Division III football championships five times. The Stagg Bowl has taken Naperville Cardinals from Ohio to Maryland to Virginia and, most recently, to Texas.
And every time, the North Central Cardinal Band has marched right alongside the team — win or lose — rallying support, regaling crowds and inspiring a sense of home, no matter how many miles they stood away from the school’s Benedetti-Wehrli Stadium.
So on Sunday, when North Central clinched its third division title at Houston’s Shell Energy Stadium, it wasn’t just the jerseyed Cardinals that relished the season-in-the-making moment. No, pride radiated from the plumed stands as well.
“There’s moments where you think, Oh, we’re just marching, we’re just the band, we’re the entertainment for half-time,” said Chris Kalinka, a sophomore band member. “But at the same point, we’ve been there for every home game. And as much as we’re not the players on the football team, we are still part of the North Central team.
“Their win feels just as much our win.”
One of only a handful of NCAA Division III marching bands across the country, the Cardinal Marching Band became an official program of North Central in 2013, though it had operated as a student-led, student-organized operation for a few years prior, according to band director Meghan Kats.
A North Central alum herself, Kats, who graduated in 2015, recalled the band pulling together performances going back to 2011. Today, the group has grown to about 65 members, boasting varying skill sets and varying majors but a tight-knit ensemble nonetheless, she said.
“It means the world to all of us,” she said.
The band’s season starts two weeks before the fall semester begins. They set the tone for the months ahead with a devoted “band camp,” a days-long introduction to the program designed to both break the ice for new members and get veterans back into marching form.
That’s also when the band starts a new field show, an extended performance — often centered around a theme — where members get to showcase their musical, artistic and marching prowess. During the fall, they perform the show at half-time of home football games. Aside from the Stagg Bowl, the Marching Cardinals do not travel with the team.
This year’s field show was Bruno Mars themed. Alongside choreography and rotating formations, the band played top hits from the Grammy-award winning artist, including “Uptown Funk” and “Finesse.”
Introduced to band in elementary school, Kalinka stuck with music through high school. He plays the trumpet mostly but the saxophone too.
Kalinka, originally from Palos Hills, had four years of marching band already under his belt when he started his college career at North Central. However, they hardly compare to the past two seasons with the Cardinal Marching Band, he said, especially with North Central’s football ascendancy in recent years.
“Coming to North Central and having that really good football team, we get to do these incredible trips and (see them) win the championship,” he said. “It’s just a surreal experience. For only being two seasons in, it feels like I’ve already done six years worth of activities because it’s just been so exhilarating.”
Band members drove down to Houston for Sunday’s championship on a pair of buses. They were accompanied by North Central’s dance team and cheerleaders. They left at 6 a.m. Saturday morning. To drive from Naperville to Houston, it takes about 20 hours one way.
Students read, slept, chit-chatted and scrolled through Tik Tok. They made a few pitstops — St. Louis for lunch and Little Rock, Arkansas, overnight. It was peaceful, Kalinka said.
By the time they got to Texas, though, it was game time. For the band, that meant filing into a section of stands at Shell Energy Stadium set off just for them while the football team readied to square off against Ohio’s University of Mount Union. Kickoff through the fourth quarter, the band played well-practiced pep tunes in between football plays like a game of call-and-response.
“It was pure excitement,” said Aurelia Gray, a sophomore member. She plays the sousaphone. “We were just so invested in the game and every play. … I don’t think there was a quiet moment in the stands, at least on our side.”
“It was just one of those feelings that are indescribable,” Kalinka said. And it wasn’t just from sitting in the throes of the championship game but playing a part in it.
“You know, when the team is playing, they can’t see their supporters all the time,” he said. “They can’t look while they’re playing football. They can’t look to the stands and see their parents. But they can hear the band. They can hear us playing for them and giving them the physical support they need.”
The band alone had its big moment, too. At half-time — in a stadium used to hosting professional and collegiate sporting events — the Marching Cardinals performed a portion of their field show.
While she conducted from the front, senior drum major Shannon Blonski recalled looking up at the stadium’s big screen and seeing the band hit its mark.
“Honestly, I feel like that’s the best we’ve ever played the show,” Blonski said. Calling the Cardinal Marching Band “an experience like no other,” she said she’s grateful the band has been able to join the football team “on the ride.”
For fellow senior drum major Olivia Wegner, Sunday’s performance made her past four seasons spent with the Cardinal Marching Band come full circle, she said.
“I don’t know quite the right vocabulary to describe it,” she said. “Exhilarating, fantastic, phenomenal. It was so breathtaking.”
Wegner recalled stepping off the field afterwards and finding her band director. She and Kats took a beat to soak the moment in.
“We both teared up and started crying a little bit,” Wegner said. “She said that she was proud of me, and I wasn’t really able to speak.”
Compounding it all, Wegner’s mom was in the crowd, much to her surprise.
Over the past four years, Wegner’s mom has attended “every single game that she was physically able to come to,” Wegner said. Ahead of the Cardinals’ trip to Houston, though, Wegner’s parents told her that Texas is a little bit too far of a drive.
Wegner thought that was that. But when she got off the bus Sunday, she got a text from her mom. She asked what Wegner was up to. Then, through the bus window, Wegner saw her. Her mom was there after all. Wegner sprinted off the bus.
“I gave her a big hug,” she said. “It’s emotional, at the very end of it all, when you’re standing there, hugging your mom, and it’s just all over. (You realize) that it’s time to move forward and there’ll be somebody who takes your place next year.
“I can come back and visit, you know, but there’s just something so unique about having been with such a special group of people for four years.”
