Keith Coleman intends to make full use of every advantage available to him as he gears up for his first season as coach of the AIB College of Business women’s basketball team. He’ll analyze his players’ strengths and plan his strategies accordingly.
But he’ll also use a bit of psychology.
Coleman, who is also AIB athletics director, is out to ensure his Eagles take the floor at the Activities Center with the best possible home-court advantage.
To create an electrifying atmosphere, Coleman wants noise. It’s high time, he decided, that AIB’s rapidly expanding athletics program had a pep band to fire up the teams and the fans.
“A pep band creates the sound, the volume,” he says.
Coleman envisions basketball games as three-ring events. The game is in the center ring, getting the most attention from fans. The other rings raise the energy in the gym and help it flow from fans to players.
For younger or older members of the audience who come to see family members play, Coleman says the side rings are important to their enjoyment of the experience.
He knows kids love to high-five school mascot E.O. the Eagle, cheer with the cheerleaders and watch the dance team perform.
The pep band will get kids moving and engage older fans with traditional athletic fight songs and other familiar standards.
And if the band intimidates the visiting team or drowns out the opposing coaches’ instructions to their players, all the better.
Coleman sought a special director to lead the band.
“I wanted someone who has excitement about the band, who understands music, who understands the environment I’m trying to create, who knows when to play and when not to play, and who could help the students learn the songs,” he says.
Coleman found the perfect director in Roger Maxwell. A graduate of the University of Northern Iowa, Maxwell taught music for 10 years in the Iowa school system, worked with the Iowa Board of Regents for 25 years and authored two volumes of Fourteen Weeks to a Better Band, as well as Twelve Weeks to a Better Jazz Ensemble.
“Roger Maxwell is outstanding,” Coleman says. “The gentleman knows music. He has worked around high schools. He understands my vision of the atmosphere needed. He loves AIB. He loves the students here.”
Both of Maxwell’s sisters and one of his children attended AIB. His wife, Arenda “Bunny” Maxwell, taught English at AIB for 25 years.
“I’m excited about the pep band. I won’t be satisfied until we get in the gym,” Maxwell says. “Even if we start with only three or four people, we’ll build from there. I’m going to find the best music I can, and we’ll have the best rock-and-roll and jive band you’ve ever seen.”
At a recent orientation for new fall students, Coleman recruited half a dozen band members, including a parent eager for a chance to play his trumpet.
Coleman and Maxwell invite AIB alumni and members of the community to be part of the band. Musicians can drop in whenever they want for as many or as few games as they want, says Coleman. Maxwell, who is well-practiced at arranging music, promises that anyone will be able to follow along, even if they’re a little rusty and their instrument is a little dusty.
The core of the band, though, will be students such as Luke Burch of West Des Moines, who is new to AIB this fall. A Sports and Event Management major, he plays trumpet, mellophone and French horn and participated in marching, symphonic and jazz bands at Valley High School. Coincidentally, Maxwell’s son, David, is vice principal at Valley, and he mentored Burch through a writing project.
“Roger Maxwell is pretty cool, just like his son,” Burch says. “He definitely knows his music, and the pep band under his direction will be phenomenal.”
Maxwell met some of his future musicians at a kick-off meeting on the AIB campus this summer. After sharing part of his rich life story, he finished with a little pep-band pep talk.
“This is the beginning,” Maxwell says of the band, which will debut at the college’s Homecoming games Nov. 3.
“If you’re looking for something big, jump in and have fun. This is going to be good. I guarantee you, no other schools are going to have a band like AIB is going to have. It’s a promise.”
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