At football games, the band is always playing. The fanfare will begin, the horns will blare, the drums will start to beat, and the audience will clap when the song is done. They’ll go out on the field at halftime and perform. Sometimes, they can be heard after school in Senior Square or out on the football field practicing their songs. But regardless of the countless hours of work put in by both the band members and staff, it seems that so few at Pembroke Pines Charter High School (PPCHS) know the full extent of what goes on behind the scenes.
Band director and teacher Matthew Espinosa is the man behind the PPCHS marching band. He not only teaches the band classes during instructional time, but also spends his hours after school making sure that the marching band students achieve their full potential. For the past few years, he’s been focused on improving the band so they can compete against other schools.
“I always came from really competitive programs,” remarks Espinosa, “so my dream is to have a program that’s just as competitive as the one I came from, which consistently makes state finals every single year.” Espinosa graduated from Fleming Island High School in Orange Park, Florida, and would eventually go on to work as a staff member for the band there.
When he came to Charter, he saw potential for the band here to be competitive, just as it was at his former school. “Just getting to see the area and hear the students, there’s a lot of talent here,” he says. “It just wasn’t being utilized correctly before. It was a lack of direction that can derail [success], which was going on before I took over. It became my goal to provide a sense of direction and a sense of ownership of this program to the students, so that one day it could be the competitive, high-performing program we see today.”
Since then, Espinosa has made it his goal to turn the PPCHS band into something that was able to compete at a high level. “We’re always constantly trying to evolve, and that includes the way we structure our outside staff as well,” explains the band director. “So we kind of function like a sports team. Myself and Mrs. Rodriguez, you can consider us to be the head coach and the assistant coach. We have woodwind instructors, brass instructors, we have visual instructors, we have percussion instructors. It becomes very much a team-focused approach.”
Recently, the program has hit a turning point. Though it’s been years, the band has seen significant improvements, and consistently places high at local band competitions. Just last weekend, the band received straight superiors at their MPA evaluation: the highest score possible. Espinosa sees the band’s success both at the evaluations and their second-place ranking at their competition on October 4th as an indicator that they’ll go on to do even better in their final competition.
“It’s a good indicator of where we stand,” he explains. “Second place is the highest we’ve achieved at that competition, and it sets us up nicely, and lets us know where we stand going into our state championship competition, which is going to be on November 8.”
Espinosa notes, though, that he couldn’t have achieved what he wanted to do with the band without the help of countless others. “The administration has also been really supportive to us throughout this whole process. They’ve really done a lot to trust myself and trust Mrs. Rodriguez with our decision making in building this program. So as much as we thank our staff and thank our team and how far that we’ve come, we really wouldn’t be able to do this without support from our administration and athletic coaches.”
The band continues to practice nearly every day after school, often having nights that stretch past 8:00 PM. Their state championship date approaches next week on November 8.
