Hendricken is base camp for traveling drum and bugle corps

By Pete Fontaine
Posted 6/29/17

By PETE FONTAINE It's summer, and Ruby Willis, Chris Regicorte and Serenity MCcArdle are getting an educational experience of their lifetimes filled with travel and music. But their days don't include things like soaking up the sun and enjoying a day at

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Hendricken is base camp for traveling drum and bugle corps

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It’s summer, and Ruby Willis, Chris Regicorte and Serenity MCcArdle are getting an educational experience of their lifetimes filled with travel and music. But their days don’t include things like soaking up the sun and enjoying a day at the beach. Instead, they’re up at 7 a.m. and the day doesn’t end until 9:30 and lights go out at 10:45 p.m.

Welcome to the Spartans, a traveling troupe of multi-talented musicians based in Nashua, N.H. that are practicing – and literally living – at Bishop Hendricken High School in preparation for Monday night’s season-opening performance in the annual Bristol Fourth of July Drum & Bugle Corps Competition at Cranston Stadium.

Monday’s competition, which begins at 6 p.m. and is also the season’s kick-off event for the Spartans who will travel to such places as Johnsonburg, Va., White Lakes, Mich., Cedar Rapids, Iowa and Oregon, Wis. this summer before the Aug. 10 World Championships in Indianapolis.

The Spartans are no strangers to Warwick as they marched in the recent Gaspee Days Parade and spent a week at Hendricken about the same time last summer in preparation for their 2016 season opener in Cranston.

But like most drum and bugle corps, the Spartans have a high-priced budget that Director Richard Rigolini reports is approximately “a half million dollars or so” that’s seemingly always on the increase and doesn’t have room for any amenities for the 120 musicians who range in age from 15 to 22 and come from places like London, Florida, New York and Alabama to represent a multi-championship corps in summer competitions and parades.

The musicians are camped in the Hendricken gymnasium and their adult volunteers and directors – who are mostly school teachers that have a special love for music – stay in classrooms.

When asked about food for Spartans, Rigolini – who is in his 21st season with the corps and has worked in Administration at Boston University for the past 30 years – replied, “The corps enjoys meals serve at our Home on the Road.”

And that is, for all intents and purposes, the trailer portion of a 16-wheeler that’s about as complete of a full kitchen you’d expect to find in any restaurant.

During Tuesday night’s practice, the tuba players Emily Dawson, Kurt Lindberg and Drew Coraccio gave what they called “great, home cooked food” a thumbs up and emphasized “we’re having a lot of fun” working with the many new faces who make up the 2017 Spartans.

“We have volunteers who travel with the corps and do all the cooking,” said Rigolini, who is carrying on the Spartans tradition that corps founder Albert LaFlamme started in 1955. “And we own all our equipment.”

And that, Rigolini explained, includes motor coaches to move the musicians, staff, directors and volunteers from event to event as well as several tractor trailers and smaller trucks that carry instruments and other items the Spartans use during their high-powered performances.

That’s where Ann Prendergast, the Spartans Director of Operations, comes in.

“Ann does basically everything and anything you can think of – from budgets to travel to food – that keeps the corps running.” Rigolini said of the Lichtfield, NH resident. “And most especially like lining up practices facilities like the one here at Bishop Hendricken.”

As noted, this week marks the second time in as many years that the Spartans and lived and trained at Hendricken and, as both Rigolini and Prendergast and other volunteers emphasized during Tuesday night’s practice: “The people here have been great to each and every member of our corps. They’ve made us feel right at home!”

So, the Spartans will continue their rigorous 12-hour days on the grass field at Hendricken where they work well into the night’s darkness, but only because there’s new turf being installed on the lighted field where they worked out last summer.

However, that in no way has been a deterrent for this spirited drum and bugle corps that was started in New Hampshire some 62 years ago as a way to keep at-risk kids off the streets but now is made up of multi-talented musicians who take great pride in the precision and choreography that keeps the Spartans ranked among the best corps in the country.

Thus, the Spartans are gearing up for Monday night’s Summer Music Preview, as it’s called, at Cranston Stadium before an amazing and unique schedule on the Fourth of July.

Unlike most drum and bugle corps that will compete Monday night in Cranston, the Spartans won’t march in the annual Bristol Fourth of July Parade.

“We’ll be marching in three other parades that day,” Rigolini explained, saying that the Spartans will be in Chelmsford and Wakefield, MA and later in Merrimack, NH but their day won’t end until later Tuesday night when they put on a special concert for Nashua Mayor Jim Donchess that will serve as a Fourth of July salute and prelude to the city’s annual fireworks celebration.

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