Last week, I acknowledged that I am a band nerd, and a marching band nerd at that. I also mentioned that I have served as the P.A. Voice of the U.T.-Arlington Maverick Marching Band since 1998. It is fair to state that the UTA Band has shaped my life. I have close friends from UTA to this day, all from my involvement with the band. I was Drum Major there for 5 years (one of only 3 people who served as DM for 5 years), and that partially led to my career in education. I learned leadership skills there that have influenced me throughout my life. I was President of their Kappa Kappa Psi (national honorary band fraternity) chapter for a year and am also a Life Member of the chapter. I was President of the UTA Band Alumni Association for 4 years. I met my wife in the UTA Band. And my P.A. work with the band was the impetus for my voiceover career. You could say band has been instrumental (pun intended, cue rim-shot) in my adult life.

It just so happens that this past weekend was Alumni Day for the Maverick Marching Band (typically referred to as the MMB), where they invite UTA alumni of all eras to come out and take in a brief rehearsal and a preview run of this year’s show. As part of that performance, I got to do a run of my pre- and post-show announcements. This year’s announcements acknowledge that UTA is celebrating its 130th anniversary, but more importantly to me, that this is the 40th season that the UTA MMB is performing without a football team.

If you’re not from the Arlington area, you might not realize or know that U.T.-Arlington has no football team, and if so, it’s likely you also didn’t know that they have a marching band without a team. Yes, it is unusual. 40 years ago, it was unheard of. And that is the purpose of this week’s post — to highlight some of the history that led to UTA cancelling its football program, the genesis of the current iteration of the MMB, and the ebb and flow of the band program through the past 40 years. Yes, it is another 2-parter.

To begin, let’s take a trip back in time to 1956. My parents were celebrating their first wedding anniversary, my oldest sister was born, and in Arlington, TX, the Rebels of Arlington State College won a national championship in football. Specifically, they won the Junior Rose Bowl, at the actual Rose Bowl Stadium in Pasadena, defeating Compton College to win the National Junior College Championship. Then in 1957, ASC won it again. College football in Arlington reached its pinnacle with that back-to-back feat 68 years ago, and it’s been downhill ever since.

A quick rundown of those intervening years: Arlington State became a four-year institution in 1959, playing in NCAA Division II. ASC was a founding member of the Southland Conference in 1964 and actually won the conference championship in 1966 and 1967. The 1967 team was the first to play as U.T.-Arlington instead of Arlington State College after the university moved from the Texas A&M system to the U.T. system. To conclude that 1967 season, the UTA Rebels, as they were called, won their final bowl game in school history – The Pecan Bowl in, of all places, Abilene, TX, at Shotwell Stadium.

Shortly after that Pecan Bowl victory, UTA’s student body began to get restless with the school’s Rebel mascot, its use of “Dixie” as the fight song, and the Confederate battle flag as a school symbol, including on the back of the UTA Rebel Band’s uniforms. The University ultimately changed its mascot to Mavericks in 1971, which it retains today. Along the way, UTA also struggled with stadium issues. Memorial Stadium was its on-campus stadium, with a capacity of 10,000, that was usually full during those winning seasons in the late 1960s. But school officials considered it outdated and wanted a larger venue to move up to a higher level of college football. So UTA began playing at Turnpike Stadium in 1970, which would be renamed Arlington Stadium when the Texas Rangers arrived in 1972. The Rangers took complete control of Arlington Stadium, at which point the Mavericks (also known as the Movin’ Mavs) began playing home games at Cravens Field, a high school facility in Arlington.

In retrospect, it’s clear that the stadium issues may have been the beginning of the end for UTA football. When they played on-campus at Memorial Stadium, the Rebels had a strong following. Move to a bigger venue that happens to be multi-purpose for baseball and football? How about a high school stadium with wooden bleachers? Watch the following and attendance dwindle. String together 9 straight losing seasons from 1970 through 1978. Watch the following and attendance dwindle even more. And as the following and attendance dwindled, football began to lose money. Yet UTA managed to get funding for a new 12,000 seat stadium that opened in 1980 – Maverick Stadium. The inaugural game against North Texas State (now the University of North Texas) saw a crowd of 18,000, with temporary bleachers added – this was fortuitous, since the stadium was designed to expand the width of both grandstands and even add a second deck on the east stands. I was there; it was an amazing crowd. It was actually the first college football game broadcast by fledgling cable network ESPN. So much promise, but UTA lost that opener 31-14 on its way to a 3-8 season in 1980, with its only home win before a crowd of 2,000 on a bitterly cold November night. (I was also there.) Maverick Stadium never saw attendance higher than 9,500 for the rest of UTA football’s history and never averaged more than 8,000 in a season. For a program with big-time aspirations, those kinds of attendance numbers were dismal. The team managed to win the Southland Conference once more, in 1981, but alas, that was the year the SLC champion did NOT earn an automatic bid to the Independence Bowl. No extra revenue or exposure there. The last official UTA football game in Maverick Stadium took place on November 16, 1985, a 29-14 loss to Louisiana Tech in front of 4,800 fans. (Guess who was there that day?) A week later, they concluded the 1985 season with yet another loss at NTSU. Then on November 25, 1985, President Wendell Nedderman announced that the University was cancelling the football program due to poor attendance and massive financial losses.

“Interesting story. The takeaway was that you were a fan of a losing team.” I lived 10 minutes from the stadium and I had four old siblings who went to UTA. And I grew up as a sports fan. OF COURSE I went to the games. But amidst the losses on the field, I found myself more and more intrigued by the band, especially after I started playing saxophone the same fall that Maverick Stadium opened. The UTA Maverick Band was mesmerizing to me. Gigantic sound, great colorguard, and what were considered cool uniforms for the late 1970s and early 1980s. “Tomorrow’s Sound, Today” was theIr nickname, and the band was actually ground-breaking for the time in terms of sound and approach. When Maverick Stadium opened, the east stands (opposite the pressbox) were actually the “home” stands where students sat. The band performed halftime to those stands, then they would play postgame to the pressbox (west) side. I found myself mostly sitting on the west side, so I would stick around for postgame, when the stands were empty and the band was extra LOUD. For a budding band nerd, this was nirvana. I knew I wanted to be a part of it. Once I ascended to drum major of my high school marching band, I had designs on being a drum major of the UTA Maverick Band. The reason I was at the last home game on 11/16/85 was because our band was invited to attend and perform at the game (obviously to put some more people in the stands). I was intent on impressing UTA’s directors with my own command of our group; I have no idea if they even noticed my presence, but I knew involvement in the UTA band was on my radar, for sure.

So when the announcement came down on 11/25/85, I pretty much figured that dream was over, and I was looking at breaking off from my siblings and attending a different school than UTA. Then something unique happened. Ray C. Lichtenwalter, Director of Bands at UTA, sought to continue the marching band in spite of the loss of football, but doing so at great risk. There was a movement among some fans to hold a pep rally in favor of football and opposition to President Nedderman’s decision, and these fans approached Mr. Lichtenwalter in hopes of having the band participate in the rally. Lichtenwalter declined these fans, cooperated with Nedderman’s decision, and instead requested that the University continue funding the marching band as an exhibition band. The fans who wanted the University to reconsider football were livid, and they let him know about it. But where had they been the past decade when UTA football was drawing fewer than 8,000 fans per game? Lichtenwalter was focused on how he could serve his students in a new era for UTA. The idea was that, for Music Education students at UTA, marching band was an integral lab environment where they learned how to construct, teach, and perform a modern marching band show in preparation for teaching high school band. Lichtenwalter justified continuation of the program as an academic pursuit as opposed to simply a spirit group that would naturally disband after the cancellation of football. It was a rather forward-thinking move on the part of Mr. Lichtenwalter, which is unsurprising. Lichtenwalter had taught at UTA since 1967, becoming Director of Bands in 1975. He was the brains behind “Tomorrow’s Sound Today,” modernized uniforms, and a new approach to college band at UTA. Over the previous decade, the UTA Maverick Band had evolved into something interesting and groundbreaking. Pursuing marching band without football as its own creative endeavor was simply the next logical step for the program.

In the spring of 1986, I auditioned and was selected to be one of 2 Assistant Drum Majors on a 3-person team at UTA as they embarked on this unprecedented journey. As a result, I became the 5th of 5 members of the Ponce family to attend UTA in the 1970s and 1980s, and I entered an organization that would influence me in countless ways. But more importantly, the UTA Marching Band, “New Direction,” as it was called, began its own journey that would span more than 4 decades exploring music and how it could be conveyed through the medium of marching band.

Come back tomorrow to read how that journey has unfolded.

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