ROCKFORD, Illinois — Hall of fame coach Phil Jackson once said, “The strength of the team is each individual member. The strength of each member is the team.”
On the campus of Auburn High School on the west side of the corps’ hometown, Phantom Regiment members were putting that idea into action. As they gathered for their final off-season rehearsal camp at the end of April, the notes on the page mattered, sure, but the bonds they were building mattered even more.
“There's a crazy energy — It's electric,” Regiment horn sergeant Joshua Jones said about his fellow corps members. “Everybody is giving energy back to each other. Everybody's having genuine conversation. It's not stale small talk.”
Corps members rolled into Rockford on Friday evening, April 25, lugging their backpacks, sleeping bags, wire music stands and binders. Over the next 48 hours, the Regiment brass, percussion, and color guard sections came together — some for the first time since early winter — to rehearse, to learn and to figure out how to become a team. According to visual staff member Ivan De La Cruz, there’s a process in place to help make that happen.
“We often say, ‘You need to go meet someone new at the water break. You need to sit with someone new over here,’ because (that process) is building that culture of them really being one unit,” De La Cruz said, “It’s not a horn line, a color guard, or a drum line — it's a drum corps."
“Everybody wants to get to know each other,” Jones added. “Everybody wants to collaborate together in this show that we're going to perform.”
Even before the April rehearsal weekend, Jones said that Regiment members stayed connected through regular video assignments and virtual check-ins, helping them maximize their limited time together at in-person practices. The horn line has had access to all the music for this year's yet-to-be-revealed production for several months, and over the weekend, both brass and percussion sections worked through each movement of the show during sectional and full-ensemble rehearsals.
For the color guard — whose members often take time off over the winter to perform with independent winter ensembles — the April camp also served as a major checkpoint. Alongside learning flag and rifle work and choreography for the corps' production, performers continued auditioning for a spot in the final 2025 roster before “spring training” kicks off at the end of May.
New hopefuls and seasoned veterans, each wearing numbered bibs pinned to their rehearsal gear, were called out from the gymnasium bleachers in small groups. From the top rows, staff members evaluated each performer's movements, making careful notes to determine the strongest collective section to take the field this summer.
“This is an extremely talented group,” fourth-year color guard section leader Jocelyn Wallen said. “It's going to be a really special year.”
Phantom Regiment enters 2025 with momentum on its side. Following 2020’s COVID shutdown, the corps’ retool of its 2003 “Harmonic Journey” production for 2021’s exhibition season rekindled the hearts and minds of drum corps fans across the country. Since then, the group has steadily improved, with rising competitive finishes in 2022, 2023, and most recently in 2024, when Regiment finished in fourth, its highest placement in more than a decade.
But before anyone can dream of marching back into Lucas Oil Stadium for the DCI World Championship and the conclusion of the 2025 summer tour, there are countless reps to log, thousands of miles to travel, and tens of thousands of fans to entertain along the way.
For Phantom Regiment members, the energy is tangible. A "can't-wait" attitude is filling every rehearsal block and every conversation as they anticipate the summer season ahead.
“I'm looking forward to being back and performing under the stadium lights,” Wallen said. “I don't think that I could get this feeling that I get performing anywhere else except for the Phantom Regiment. I feel like we're going to hit the ground running, and we're only going to go up from here.”