As a high school senior, Kim Lareau wouldn’t audition for any other music school before she heard back from Illinois. Whether the answer was “yes” or “no,” Lareau wanted to hear for sure that she would – or would not – earn a spot in the University’s School of Music. Her second stipulation? The Marching Illini. As a member of her high school band, Lareau worked a concession stand during an Illinois football game, getting her first close-up look at the Marching Illini. She decided she had to join.

“I remember that was a really important part of why I came to school here,” said Lareau, now a junior in FAA and trumpet player in the Marching Illini.

Over the past 133 years, the Marching Illini has grown into one of Illinois’ most visible traditions. The band is older than the football team whose games it performs at, but its traditional marching style and established performance pieces have made it as much a part of game day at Illinois as the athletes with whom it shares the field.

“Everything’s tradition,” Lareau said.

The Marching Illini’s story begins with a military band, formed to celebrate the opening of Illinois Industrial University’s Drill Hall and Mechanical Shops. The band played at early baseball games and on the gridiron once the first football team was organized in 1890.

The first halftime show came at the 1907 football season opener against the University of Chicago. The band marched out in a “Block-I formation,” one of many traditions still practiced by the Marching Illini.

“We do a lot of traditional marching,” said Kyle Rhoades, a junior in FAA and Marching Illini trumpet player. “The steps that we do are very traditional. Once in a while we’ll put some new choreography in there, but even just right down to the little things we do that way are traditional.”

Much of the Marching Illini’s performances remain the same from game to game and even from year to year. Former Marching Illini director and director of bands Mark Hindsley developed field-entrance routines that are still performed at each football game. Hindsley also organized the first spelling of “ILLINI” on the field, as well as the layered “U” and “I” formation. He was also the first to call the University’s marching band the Marching Illini.

While part of the halftime show changes each week, the Three-In-One has remained the same since 1926. The pre-game show was established in the 1970s and has undergone very little change since then.

While much of the Marching Illini’s performance is standard, members say the difficulty of the routines makes them difficult to perfect.

“We take it seriously,” Lareau said. “We’re expected to sound good; we’re expected to look good.”

The Marching Illini is unique because of its sound and its steps, Lareau and Rhoades said. It may not be the flashiest or the most musically impressive, but it produces a clear sound while primarily performing traditional marching routines.

“We’re not as flashy as other bands, we’re not as huge as other bands, but we sound better than every single one of them,” Rhoades said. “And I’m quite confident in that.”

Today’s Marching Illini includes 336 members. The students in the Marching Illini receive no scholarships and earn just one hour of class credit for more than 10 hours of work each week.

But they say there are reasons they are proud to be a part of “The Best Band in the Land.”

“There’s guys who walk by rehearsal and try to mock us,” Lareau said. “But it’s like, ‘what do you do every game day that makes 70,000 people stand up and cheer?’ It’s an amazing organization to be a part of.”