RAVENNA, OH.- Contrary to what the movies will tell you, the marching band at Ravenna High School is pretty well respected. This year’s homecoming king and queen were both members. “It definitely helps that we have a small school, because we’ve all known each other our whole lives,” said Trinity Dunch, 17, who plays the trombone. “Everybody knows everybody. Someone you’ve grown up with, you don’t really pick on.”

But there are plenty of other things to worry about. Ravenna, Ohio, is not the sort of place anybody wants to make movies about, said Emmanuel Miller, 17, a senior tuba and sousaphone player. It’s the sort of place you leave, dwarfed by its next-door neighbor, Kent, home to Kent State University, which has more undergraduates (more than 20,000) than Ravenna has people (just over 11,000).

When Ashley Markle returned to photograph the band students at her alma mater, the most striking difference in her hometown was how anxious everyone seemed: about exams and extracurriculars, dates, college prep, figuring out what’s next. (Markle, who graduated in 2013, was in Ravenna’s band, too; she played the flute.)

One thing that hasn’t changed: the escape that the band room can offer.

When she was a student at Ravenna, “band didn’t even feel like part of the school, to be honest,” Markle said. “It felt like I was a part of something special and important. I felt that I could make a difference on a large team of people all striving for something we cared about.”

These days, that team snaps people up early. Julia Stratton, 15, and her girlfriend, Nina Fuller, 16, have both been playing flute since the fifth grade.

Julia was intimidated by the high school’s band at first. “There are very few anxieties I’ve felt more extreme than that of being a first-time freshman at band camp,” she said. But the people she met “make all of that anxiety feel like it fizzles away.

“My girlfriend and best friend are both fellow ‘band kids,’ and I genuinely don’t know where I’d be right now without them.”

Now, she and Nina help recruit new kids into their cohort, visiting the local middle school for a club fair in the hopes of enticing some of the eighth graders.

“Every extracurricular a person can sign up for adds anxiety and stress, but few have given me the type of support system I gained from band,” Julia said.

About 500 students attend Ravenna High. They come out to hear the band play at pep rallies and football games, where they provide the soundtrack to the Ravens’ triumphs and defeats. Their halftime show this year is centered on fearless women of pop music and blasts through a mix of Demi Lovato, Billie Eilish, Nicki Minaj, Halsey and Lizzo.

To play in the marching band, students are required to audition and enroll in concert band, a class. During marching season, the group practices every day.

There are 41 students in Ravenna’s band. But there’s a difference, the members say, between being “a band kid” and being “a kid in band.”

“There’s some kids who are obviously really weird,” said Jason Marin, 18, who plays the snare drum. “And there’s kids who just want to play music on a football field.”

While there are cliques — it’s high school! — band members consider themselves to be relatively welcoming and close-knit, especially compared with bands at larger schools.

Many of the students found their best friends or, like Julia and Nina, even their partners in band.

“I think a lot of it is because we have all seen each other go through some bad times,” said Stephen Richardson, 18. He cited early rehearsals “where everybody sucks pretty bad.” (Stephen, a percussion player, is also among those who have found love in the band room — with Trinity.)

“It’s very rewarding when you can go on the field and do something awesome with your friends,” he said.




Once you’ve experienced the rush of being on the field, it’s hard to give up. “I told my friends that if I wasn’t in band, I would be the mascot,” Jason said. “I would want to still be at the football games, and I would still get in for free.”

For the kids who call it home, the band room is a place of real refuge: somewhere to go during free periods, if you don’t like your lunch or if you just need a few minutes to reset your day. “It kind of feels like when you’re in the band room, you’re not really at school,” Julia said.

The students feel a sense of ownership over the space, and the room abides by the band’s rules, even if the musicians aren’t there.

“On Wednesdays and Thursdays, there’s a study hall group in the band room,” Julia said. “If they ever have the audacity to touch the instruments and the band kids find out about it, they’re like, this is our space.”

Territorialism aside, beef between the band and the rest of the school, the kind that pop culture would have you believe makes band kids’ lives hell, is rare.

“There are a few football players who don’t respect the effort we put in, and they get irritated that we have to practice on their field and they have to practice somewhere else,” Nina said. “But that’s just three seniors with big egos.”

Otherwise, the school vibes with the band. “We’ve marched through the halls before, for pep rallies before our big rivalry game, and they were cheering us on,” Nina added.

That spotlight, while thrilling, can also be terrifying. “There will always be times that band makes me feel like the world is caving in,” said Julia, who struggles with anxiety, especially before big concerts or games.

But when the music is blaring and she’s surrounded by people who lift her up, she’s able to let it all go and just play.

Many of the current band kids are juniors or seniors and looking toward the future — one that may take them far beyond the bounds of their hometown.

“Ravenna is sort of a nothing town; people aren’t given a lot of opportunity,” said Markle, the photographer. “When I was growing up there, it seemed that most people’s mentality was, ‘This town is garbage and that’s all it will ever be, so no sense in trying to make it any better.’”

For the most part, it seems, that hasn’t changed. “I don’t feel like there’s enough opportunity here for me right now,” said Emmanuel, the tuba and sousaphone player. A senior, he is headed to Bowling Green State University in the fall to study aviation and dreams of traveling the world after school. Up to this point, the farthest he’s been from Ravenna is Georgia.

Emmanuel is hungry for opportunities beyond his hometown. But he also sees himself as a boomerang — someone who will inevitably be drawn back to this corner of the world when “quiet” and “boring” no longer seem so bad.

“I want to settle down,” he said. “Ravenna is a perfect town for that.”

Jason, a junior, is itching to get beyond the bubble of his hometown. He plans to go into the military after graduation. “They always say that musicians are really good with dealing with stress, pressure and concentration, so that might help out,” he said.

Trinity, also a junior, said: “Ravenna is a town that people don’t stay in. It’s OK to grow up in, but it’s not somewhere you stay.” It saddens her to think that she may become one of those who leave for a bigger pond where “not everyone really knows what you’re capable of doing.”

The secret of a town like Ravenna — the one she thinks people don’t talk about enough — is that being small has its perks, too. You are surrounded by people who know your potential and want you to succeed, which means that opportunities, while less plentiful, are easier to seize.

“I’m grateful for what Ravenna is,” Trinity said.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.