Delaware State band mirrors football program’s resurgence

DOVER, Del. — Delaware State continued its impressive run through the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference on Nov. 15 with a convincing 26-13 football victory over MEAC rival Howard. The victory extended the Hornets’ conference record to 4-0 and set up a massive showdown with conference bully South Carolina State on Saturday.

The winner will win the conference title and play for the Black national championship at the Celebration Bowl next month in Atlanta.

While much of the national attention has correctly been focused on first-year head coach DeSean Jackson, the soulful background music for the Hornets’ success has been provided by the Delaware State band and its first-year director Eugene Diggs.

While Jackson was charged with revitalizing Delaware State’s football program, Diggs was charged with revitalizing its marching band, which — in the HBCU universe — is an important part of the university’s persona. Delaware State’s band, aptly called the Approaching Storm, has provided a wonderful soundtrack to the football team’s success.

“It’s been great,” Diggs said on Nov. 14 after a late-evening practice. “I’m super happy to be here and support the team, because when the football team does well everything else is just really easy. I’ve been at a school with a football team that wasn’t doing so well, and things were difficult. But when the football team is winning, everybody’s in a good mood, everything is lighter, everything sounds better and, look, we get to play more often.”

While many large universities use their successful sports teams as the institution’s front porch, at many HBCUs an electric marching band often delivers good tidings and a distinctive cultural statement to the rest of the world. The football team is the muscle; the band can provide an attractive spiritual force behind the muscle.

“There are a lot of front-porch opportunities that attract students at HBCUs in particular,” said Delaware State president Dr. Tony Allen. “A lot of it is about the culture, and in many respects the culture in some ways begins with music. So, for us to have a good band with a rich legacy, particularly where we’re located, that’s really important for us.”

Delaware State is the northernmost HBCU in America. Many of the prospective students come from the Northeast and want to have an authentic HBCU experience. A dynamic band is an important part of that experience.

“I get to recruit more kids from the North because of where we’re located,” Allen said. “And they want that rich HBCU spirit that you can get from a great band that starts the process when you start thinking about historically Black colleges and universities.”

Diggs has worked as feverishly as Jackson to re-energize the Delaware State band. He and Jackson have worked closely to synchronize the music to make sure it provides energy to the players and a festive atmosphere, especially at Hornets home games.

“Coach Jackson and I talked at the beginning of the season and before the season,” Diggs said. “We’ve talked throughout the season.”

Jackson said that during those conversations with Diggs he offered suggestions about providing his team with an edge through the power of music.

“It’s just really getting our players extra energy, like asking what songs [to play], having certain beats,” Jackson said after the Nov. 15 game. “They do a good job of considering our opinions as players because we feel like during the game we have an advantage; especially at home, you’ve got the advantage of your band. So, it’s really coordinating things and just asking what songs we want to play. There are certain songs we give them and that’s a huge addition.”

Diggs said that like Jackson’s first season as coach in Dover, this year was designed to be a building-block campaign for the Approaching Storm. The band has 108 members, but Diggs would like to increase that number to between 170 and 180. Toward that end, Diggs, much like the football team, is recruiting.

At Saturday’s game against Howard, Diggs sponsored a high school band day, which attracted 350 members of area high school bands. Diggs would like the most talented to come march for Delaware State next year.

“We’re going to be auditioning about 130 high school seniors. It’s just like sports,” he said. “Marching band, or band period, is a zero-sum game: I get students, and somebody loses students. We’re all trying to get the same students, and just like football and basketball, you have five-star students. If we get two or three blue-chip players in each section, then we’re doing really, really well. And so that’s why we’re hitting the ground with recruiting really early.”

Jackson and Diggs had identical missions for their respective programs: change the mindset, raise expectations.

“It’s been a rebuilding season, because Delaware State’s band hasn’t been as good in recent years, and so it just has been about building confidence,” Diggs said. “You have to build confidence within your players. You got to let them know that they can do things that they haven’t done before. Just because you haven’t done it before doesn’t mean it’s impossible. You teach them how to play together. You teach them how to listen. And then you have to give them music that they like.”

While Diggs, 40, and Jackson, 38, are cut from the same generational cloth, the paths that led them to Delaware State were significantly different. Jackson was raised in Los Angeles, attended the University of California-Berkeley, and spent 13 seasons in the National Football League. He had a brief stint as a head coach at the high school level before landing his first NCAA Division I head coaching job at Delaware State.

Diggs was steeped in HBCU culture. He grew up in Washington D.C. and attended Morgan State University in Baltimore, where he was the band’s drum major for all four years under the direction of legendary band director Dr. Melvin Miles. Diggs earned his Bachelor of Music degree from Morgan and a Masters in Curriculum and Instruction from Gardner-Webb University in North Carolina. Prior to accepting the Delaware State job, Diggs directed the band program at Lincoln University in Missouri.

“When I moved out there, I told myself that the only way I move back to the East Coast would be if Delaware State opened up, because it’s a Division I HBCU, it’s in a major metropolitan area,” he said. “To me, Delaware State always had the tools to have a really good band. They just weren’t really able to always put them together. And I think now we’re able to finally put everything together.”

The university named Jackson as its head football coach in December 2024, and Diggs was named director of bands six months later in June. Both coaches faced an uphill climb. Delaware State had not had a winning football season since 2012. The band had gone through a number of changes with its leadership.

“It’s difficult to establish a style when Del State has had 10 or so band directors over the last 20 years,” Diggs said. “I’m hoping to give them that longevity where we can establish the things that Del State does that other bands don’t.”

He added that what other top echelon HBCU bands have that the Approaching Storm lacks is tradition, and that will only come with time.

“A lot of the bands that I would think are really good bands are bands that have longevity,” he said. “We’re talking about Florida A&M. I look at other bands, like Southern University, who has a really long history and tradition. I look at Jackson State, but also in the MEAC, Norfolk State has had a really long tradition that they’ve had since the ’70s.”

Just as the football team has been bullied over the years by MEAC rivals, the Approaching Storm has been overlooked. The only antidote was hard work, and Diggs has made sure his band is putting in the work.

An evening before Delaware State was scheduled to play Howard last week, Diggs was taking the band through a late-night practice on Alumni Field.

“We practice at night,” he said as practice ended.

I had seen Diggs in action for the first time eight days earlier after Delaware State had defeated Morgan State 14-12 in a rain-soaked game in Baltimore. In the ensuing “fifth quarter” when opposing bands battle each other, Diggs led his band in a marathon back-and-forth battle with the Morgan State band in a veritable monsoon.

Neither band would give in and Diggs, without any rain covering, directed his band to stand its ground. The battle lasted for more than two hours after the football game ended. After that, the two bands engaged in a drum line battle.

Diggs is teaching the band to have an edge.

“That was personal,” Diggs said. “A lot of other band directors see that we’re bringing the rivalry back between Del State and Morgan. People watched the video of the fifth quarter we did with Morgan. They were like, ‘Oh my god,’ which was the best one I’ve seen in a long time.”

It’s fitting that Jackson and Diggs arrived on the Delaware State campus at the same time and with the same mission: build a great football team and a sensational band. For HBCUs, this is a formula that goes back at least eight decades.

Florida A&M hired Dr. William P. Foster in 1945 and charged him with creating a band that would bring national attention to the university. A year later, the university hired legendary head coach Jake Gaither and charged him with building a great football program. Gaither turned Florida A&M into a powerhouse. Foster built a legendary marching band, which became known as the Marching 100. He introduced innovations in marching and pageantry techniques that transformed the culture of college marching bands across the country.

Eight decades later, a first-year head football coach and a first-year band director are trying to build a winning program in Dover, Delaware. For Jackson and Diggs, beating South Carolina State on Saturday and reaching the Celebration Bowl would be two sensational milestones.

“It would be big,” Diggs said. “I think the more exposure we get Delaware State University the better. I feel like Delaware State is always one of the HBCUs that’s been overlooked because it’s in Delaware, and it’s just been easy to overlook because nothing bad really ever happens here.

“It’s good that we’re able to get good things out there. The football team is the catalyst to a lot of really good things happening at Delaware State.”

The Approaching Storm is helping the program make beautiful music.

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