The award-winning Fayette bands will have a new director this year. Elizabeth Betts has already begun working with students and started marching band camp last week.

Mrs. Betts comes to Fayette from Maysville, where she spent three years. Before that, she taught at North Harrison for five years. 

Mrs. Betts said that she and her husband, Daryl, were searching for schools where the two teachers could work together. They were both hired by the district in April. Mr. Betts will teach middle school special education and literature and will serve as an assistant coach for high school baseball and girls basketball. They have two boys, Liam, 9, and Cadence, 6.

Longtime Fayette choir director and music teacher Vanessa Minor reached out to Betts about the band director position.

“I graduated from Boonville, so it’s kind of like coming home,” said Mrs. Betts. “And I wanted to teach at a small school.”

Growing up in Boonville, she said she was quite familiar with the high reputation for the Fayette bands. “Even coming for CMU Band Day when I was in high school, you knew who Fayette was right off the bat.”

And those long-standing traditions, such as the marching high step, that have made the Fayette bands great are not going anywhere. Mrs. Betts said she doesn’t plan to change much. However, she may add some new things. A percussionist herself, she has already put together an indoor drumline for this year’s marching competitions. Summer practices have already taken place, as has the traditional freshmen boot camp. 

Fayette will also compete at four, rather than three, marching competitions this fall. The Falcons will march at Carrollton, CMU Band Day in Fayette, Macon, and Cameron.

Drum Majors for this year are Bella Asbury and Chloe Huster. “They’ve kind of been showing me the ropes,” said Mrs. Betts. “I don’t think I could have managed this far without them already.”

She is also well acquainted with Central Methodist band director and current school board president Skip Vandelicht, who spent more than three decades at the helm of the Fayette bands. In fact, Mrs. Betts said Vandelicht was the first band director she observed as a college freshman majoring in music education. “I came home on Christmas break from college and went in and saw him,” she said. “And I’ve sent a few kids to CMU, so I know him pretty well.”

Mrs. Betts began her college career in Chicago but soon transferred to Mizzou. She earned a master's degree from Kansas State.

One of the challenges as the new director, she said, is renewing kids’ excitement about playing in the band. Like most schools across the nation, Fayette faced severe limitations over the last year and a half due to the COVID-19 pandemic. All marching competitions were canceled and band concerts were videotaped and shown over the internet.

She said that because of those circumstances, those who have returned have come ready to work. But those limitations have taken their toll. Right now the number of students in the high school band has dropped to the low 50s. The football band, that will play in the stands and during halftime of games this fall, could have fewer than 30 students. She hopes that seeing the band performing well on the field, coupled with the upcoming Washington DC trip (a tradition every four years) in the summer, will draw in those students who dropped out.

“I’m a little nervous with a lot of the kids being in football and our numbers being lower,” she said. “We’re going to have to be pretty creative. We’re probably going to bring in some extra help to play.

“The silver lining is that the kids who are there and ready to go are so hungry. I’ve seen that already with drumline camp and the color guard,” she said.

This year’s marching band competition show will revolve around the concert band arrangement for The Great Locomotive Chase, by Robert W. Smith. The music was inspired by the events surrounding the railway between Atlanta and Chattanooga during the early years of the American Civil War.

Mrs. Betts explained that the production is bigger than what Fayette has done in the past. She said she hopes to display the show with the full band following one of the home football games this fall. “I really would like to share that with the community since we’re putting in so much more time and money into it.”

Once marching season is over, Mrs. Betts said a major focus will be getting students interested again in district band. Only two high school students participated in the district band last year, which was heavily modified due to the pandemic. “I’m hopeful that that really helps build their technique. I’m hoping we get numbers for that going.”