A young woman from Mountain Top is a member of the West Chester University marching band which made history this month by becoming the first marching band from Pennsylvania’s State System of Higher Education to participate in the iconic Rose Parade in Pasadena.
“It was amazing,” Crestwood High School graduate Kate Fenstermacher said of her experience at the Rose Parade. “It was so exciting to perform along with all these other wonderful people.”
The band and its 340 members also made history by becoming the first band in the history of the Rose Parade to use more than 20,000 live flowers as part of their performance. They did it all while bringing a little of “Philly” and Chester County with them in the form of rolling paneled floats that depicted the Love Statue, Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell. They also displayed a 30-flag mural with iconic images of the Philadelphia region including the Liberty Bell, Independence Hall, the Love Statue, the Rocky Statue, Valley Forge Park, the Longwood Garden fountains, Brandywine Battlefield, Lenape Nation, and, of course, West Chester University.
The West Chester marching band learned it was invited to the Rose Parade at the end of a cavalcade of bands exhibition in New Jersey in November of 2022, Fenstermacher said.
“They announced in front of whole stadium that we were going to Rose Bowl parade while we were all on field,” the 19-year-old related.
“I had no idea that it was a possibility. I was ecstatic,” said Fenstermacher, who is majoring in nutrition at West Chester.
Fenstermacher, who plays the clarinet, said she and other band members immediately began preparing for the parade.
“It’s a long parade,” she said of the 5.5 mile-long route. “You have to start preparing and building up endurance. That’s a long time to be on parade route.”
The musician said she started going to the gym a few more times a week than she normally would have to prepare for the parade.
In late August of 2023 the band got the music it would play in the parade and after football season began practicing its formations. For the Rose Parade, the band played the theme from “Rocky,” “Philadelphia Freedom,” and the “Liberty Bell March.”
The band arrived in California on Dec. 27 and while its schedule was hectic, Fenstermacher said it allowed members time for some fun and sightseeing. The band played in a parade at Disneyland and afterwards got to spend the day at the park. Members got to eat and have fun at Dave & Buster’s, went to the Santa Monica pier, and toured Warner Brothers studio. They also got to visit Hollywood, an experience she won’t forget.
“It was nothing like I expected,” she said of her visit to Hollywood Boulevard.
Parade day was a long one for band members. “I had to be up at 3 a.m.,” Fenstermacher related. The band had to be at the staging area at 5 a.m. for the parade, which stepped off at 8 a.m. PST. Her parents, Roger and Kelly Fenstermacher, along with her brother Andrew and maternal grandparents got to see her in the parade.
The 2022 Crestwood High School graduate began taking clarinet lessons when she was in fifth and sixth grades at Fairview Elementary School. She joined the marching band in seventh grade and played in the band through her senior year. She participated in the school’s concert and jazz bands beginning in seventh grade and as a sophomore joined pit orchestra for plays, district festivals. She participated in district competition as sophomore in 2020 and district and regional band festivals in her junior and senior years.
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