Slicing Through Adversity | Issue 2024

No matter how you slice it, PIE was hit hard by the pandemic. 
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Before COVID-19 brought everything to a halt in March of 2020, Valley Christian High School’s (VCHS) Performing Indoor Ensemble (PIE) was a national powerhouse, winning three consecutive Winter Guard International (WGI) World Championships from 2017-2019. However, the 2020 finals, scheduled for the spring of that year, were an early casualty of pandemic cancellations. For a year and a half, the ensemble was silent.

When Shane Ryan (’16) was hired as K-12 Band Director in the summer of 2022, part of his mission was clear: get the band back together.

“Coming out of COVID was so difficult,” says Ryan. “Numbers were way down. It had been two years without a band program!”

Recruiting musicians to join PIE, essentially an indoor version of marching band, has been critical to rebuilding the program post-COVID. Aansh Khanal, now a senior, “had nothing else to do on Saturdays” and was intrigued by the chance to compete nationally. Committing, though, still took some convincing.

“I probably would have left if it hadn’t been for the most important element of PIE: community,” Khanal says. “PIE is like being part of a family.”

The kinship experienced by those in the program is intentional–their director is a byproduct of a family-first culture. Ryan’s father, Todd, is a legend in the marching community and a member of the Drum Corps International (DCI) Hall of Fame. Todd and his wife Kristi have helped with VCHS marching programs for decades. Beyond his parents, Shane Ryan has grandparents, aunts, and uncles who have marched; his wife, Julianna, also helps run PIE.

Ryan has a music education degree from the University of the Pacific, but he credits his parents for shaping him into the music educator he has become. Perhaps it should come as no surprise, then, that much like Khanal, Ryan notices a special closeness among the current PIE participants.

“This year’s growth happened because we clicked so well together,” the director says. “We were very community-based, we were there for each other through some extremely difficult times–it was special. And when you have a group like that, you can absolutely see a difference in performance quality.”

Ryan returned to VCHS as an employee on the heels of PIE’s first year back competing after the pandemic (they finished sixth at Worlds in the spring of 2022). In 2023, they finished second at the same competition, and in April of 2024, they returned to the top with their first World Championship since 2019.

By no means was it an easy journey. Khanal calls their famed twelve-hour rehearsals “grueling,” but they relied on their sense of community to carry the day. 

“Right before any competition, our whole band would gather together in a large circle and yell a part of the song as loud as humanly possible,” Khanal explains. “The trick was that we would spill out all the energy within ourselves, and we would translate that energy into our performances.”

“Because of how long we spend with each other, it’s almost as if we’re performing FOR each other.”

The “cha” exercise, as it was dubbed, certainly worked. What’s next for this award-winning team? Overcoming the challenges of avoiding complacency and demanding that the music, dancing, and overall performance be “next-level,” as Ryan calls it. Moving closer to perfection is easier when you’re in it together. Says Khanal, 

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