Throughout the five years of Elkhorn North’s existence, the Elkhorn North marching band has made an extraordinary rise. The band has been praised for its excellence in music and percussion performance and caught the eye of many with their most recent shows Surreality (2024) and 9 to 5 (2025).
With the Sound of The Wolfpack making strides towards becoming one of the best marching bands in the state, there has been one key reason to the newfound success…their new director.
In 2023, Elkhorn North’s band program was dealt their lowest performing marching show in school history and the news of their current director leaving for another school.
“There was a pushing factor to get better and to encourage the band, but in 2023, it didn’t feel that way,” senior drum major Evan Olijnek said. “It felt like we were given music, and if we didn’t play it correctly, they could always water it down and make it easier.”
With the devastation of losing a director sweeping over every student, the next director had to find a way to unite every member before the start of competition season.
Fortunately, the music department’s newest director didn’t come from a place of unfamiliarity to most. Ben Petrmichl was formerly a brass technician at Elkhorn North and marched in Drum and Bugle Corps (DCI) for the Colts in 2018.
“The director change from our old director to Mr. Petrmichl pushed our student section to wake up,” Olijnek said. “We didn’t want to end up getting 11th and 13th at state again.”
Within Petrmichl’s first year as a director, he pushed the band towards their best performing marching season at the time with their show Surreality. Petrmichl was able to achieve what seemed impossible years prior, despite being fresh into teaching high schoolers.
This competition season, Petrmichl has only pushed the bar for success even higher. This year’s show was entitled 9 to 5 which portrayed the daily story of working in a factory and undergoing immense stress and chaos whilst also finding comfort and security.
The Sound of The Wolfpack Marching Band competed and earned placements at the following competitions:
- Millard West Wildcat Classic (7th place overall)
- Titan Marching Invitational (6th place overall)
- Capitol City Championship (1st place overall)
- Omaha Marching Invitational (5th place overall)
- NSBA State Marching Championship (7th place overall)
This year, the band made school history by placing first overall at the Capitol City Championship for the first time ever, and by breaking their highest point score with an 82.50 at state. Other accomplishments from this season included earning best music and percussion at the same competition.
As the program continues to grow, the members and staff of the band hope to keep improving whilst keeping a humble and respectful work ethic.
“I want to keep building a consistent program of excellence, not only with music, but by building excellent people as well,” Petrmichl said.
