“Performing their 2023 program ‘The Cut-Outs,’ Drum Corps International is proud to present in championship exhibition… The Blue Devils!”

The Blue Devils take position and watch the drum majors’ hands. The track starts, and the crowd goes quiet. The team looks around at their peers, remembering all of the hard work they have put in, all of the countless hours working, all for this one moment. This is their final chance.

In August of 2023, assistant band director Matthew Assis marched with The Blue Devils at the Drum Corps International World Championship in Indianapolis. After his victorious season with the record-breaking group, Assis was hired in Azle for his first year of directing.

“I had known I wanted to be a director before then, but I care a lot about making better people, and a lot of times I look around me, just in life, and see a lot of things I don’t like,” Assis said. “And I wanted to do something that helped make better people, and I know that music and band, especially, is one great way to do that, and so I was able to put together wanting to work with younger people to make them successful in life.”

Head band director Greg Davis said that Assis’ strong suits include being committed to detail, relentless work ethic, and his pursuit of excellence within students.

“He is able to relate to them [the students] in a way that is unique,” Davis said. “He is constantly trying to improve himself as a teacher, trying to figure out what he can do better for his students.”

The Blue Devils is a competitive drum corps based in Concord, California, that competes in the Drum Corps International (DCI) World Championships, a competition full of other drum corps across the United States that are not associated with any schools.

“I made a couple lifelong friends,” Assis said. “It was just knowing that I was living this dream, just waking up every day a Blue Devil, honestly. That was probably the best part of it for me.”

However, participating in DCI requires a lot of sacrificed time, around three to four weeks of all-day rehearsals and then eight weeks on tour.

“I always wanted to do drum corps, but I had so many things come up,” Assis said. “I was supposed to march in 2020 with the Cadets, and then I was supposed to march again in 2022, but then that conflicted with my RA job in college. I was like, I might as well just go for the best there’s ever been.”

The Blue Devils have won the Drum Corps International World Championship 21 times, even holding the highest score in drum corps history with a 99.65 in 2014.

“It’s just one of the best programs, period, in the world,” Assis said. “It’s just a bunch of people who are some of the best to ever do it, and some of the best who ever will do it. Being part of a program like that is everything you would hope for and more.”

Despite having a strong passion for band directing, it’s not what Assis said he always had in mind.

“I was supposed to play cello, and if I didn’t do that, then I was supposed to be in art, and then band was my third choice, and that’s what I got,” Assis said. “I think I stayed in it, mostly just because, growing up, I was always kind of a perfectionist. Band was just something I could never be perfect at and always work at.”

Being a band director means going through different seasons of music in the year: concert, jazz and marching. Even though Assis teaches all of them, there will always be his favorite: marching band.

“It’s the only opportunity where everyone gets to see each other, be with each other every day. And I think I like how it’s just tough, when we’re in concert band and someone screws up a note, you can’t make them run a lap,” Assis said. “But when you’re out there, everyone’s trying to work to be exactly the same and lean on each other and all that. It’s a beautiful thing to see 200 people doing the same thing.”

After months of practice, it was time for the season’s most important competition: Area.

“I was so nervous the entire season. I wanted us to make state, and I wanted us to do all that,” Assis said. “And then it hit me, even before we got the results, it just hit me how lucky I was, literally. I just took the first offer I got, and I was so scared. I was going to this place I live an hour and a half away from, and I don’t know these kids, and I barely know these people, but they liked me, and they wanted me, so I guess I’ll try.”