An uncommon honor for West Chester University marching band: They will play in the Rose Parade in 2024

West Chester University is launching a $1 million fund-raising drive to send its marching band to a place where few have had the honor to tread: the Rose Parade in California.

About 80 bands compete internationally every year for one of 15 or so spots in the parade, which offers extraordinary exposure. There are about 700,000 viewers along the parade route, with 37 million more watching on television.

The selection of the bands is announced more than a year in advance. West Chester’s 337-member “Incomparable Golden Rams Marching Band” will participate in 2024.

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“From a marketing perspective, from a student recruitment perspective, from a fund-raising perspective, this is the type of event that an institution can really leverage, and we are going to do that,” said Christopher Fiorentino, president of the 17,000-student university.

Fiorentino said he anticipates no problem raising the money to send the band — the largest student organization on campus — and all its instruments to Pasadena. The school hopes to raise 80% of the amount and will kick in the rest, he said. Alumni, including the namesakes of West Chester’s Wells School of Music, former West Chester band director James Wells and his brother, Richard G. Wells, already have offered a $100,000 matching gift, he said.

The Rose Parade is the latest honor for the band. In 2019, it won the John Philip Sousa Foundation’s Sudler Trophy, considered to be the highest honor for a collegiate marching band. In 2015, it appeared in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York.

In more than 20 years, only one other Pennsylvania college has sent its band to the Rose Parade: Pennsylvania State University, which has gone multiple times when its football team played in the Rose Bowl. It will be back again in January, marching with other U.S. bands and groups from Japan, Panama, Mexico, China, and Italy. (Bands of the two teams that play in the bowl automatically are included.)

A few local high schools in Pennsylvania have also been represented: The Downingtown Blue and Gold Marching Band, which is a combination of Downingtown’s East and West high schools in Chester County made appearances in 2001, 2011, and 2022. (Their band directors, Edward Otto and Andrew German, are West Chester alumni.) Pennsbury High School in Bucks County marched in 2018, and Liberty High School in Bethlehem in 2014.

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Bands must apply to be selected. They are required to submit halftime and parade video, photographs, a list of accomplishments, and letters of recommendation from prominent people in the field.

“They were really excited about our tradition of innovation,” said Adam Gumble, director of athletic bands and a 2005 alumnus who played tuba for the band. “It’s almost a tradition of being nontraditional.”

And it dates back decades. West Chester in 1974 created instructional videos that were used by marching bands across the country, Gumble said. A few years ago, 40 members of the band started the show by sitting among the audience and performing before taking the field. During a home football game this year, a member of the color guard came off the field and played a two-minute piece on the electric violin.

When students first found out they would be going to the parade, their jaws dropped, Gumble said. Then there were cheers.

Freshman music education major Kylie Cogill, 18, marched in the Rose Parade last year as a member of Downingtown’s band.

“I don’t think you realize how big of a deal it is until you’re in the parade and making that first turn, and the crowd is immediately massive,” said the clarinet player from Downingtown. “It’s really a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. The idea that I get to go back is just crazy.”

Students’ families are excited, too.

“My grandmother wants to fly out,” said sophomore Anna Gutzler, 19, a music major and student band conductor from the Reading area. “She said, ‘The Rose Parade is my favorite parade, and I want to see my Anna march.’ She’s like, ‘I’m getting on that plane if it’s the last thing I do.’”

Made up of about 230 wind instrument players, 50 percussionists, 40 color guard members, five student coordinators, and four drum majors, the purple and gold marching band has a long and storied history at West Chester. Its earliest rendition can be traced to 1889.

A more formal version was established in the 1930s and was student-run for years before faculty took over leadership, said Andrew Yozviak, director of bands and a 1991 alumnus and former band member.

Many people in the community know of the band, which plays at home football games, parades, and other local events.

And it’s not just for music majors: 60% of members come from other majors. Senior Jason Spiegelman, 22, a theater major who plays the tuba, said band has become “a staple” of his college life. Sophomore Joe Schiffer, 19, of Ridley Park, is majoring in physics and engineering, but the tuba player said the university’s band definitely was what attracted him to West Chester.

“It really put the university at the top of my list,” said sophomore James Lobb, 19, a music education and performance major from Newton, N.J., who plays the trumpet.

Getting to appear in the Rose Parade is a bonus.

“It’s going to be really awesome just to be in front of so many viewers and have a lot of people see what we’re all about,” he said.