jaimieholly When Jaime Holly was in high school he loved math class and playing in the marching band.

Nerd alert!

“I was a marching-band nerd when I was a kid,” Holly admits to me at pretty much the moment I began speaking to him—and then over and over thereafter. But there’s no shame in his voice; he doesn’t have a complex so much as a compulsion to be clear. Because all these years later, Jaime Holly still loves math and marching band—he’s still such a nerd that he has combined them to create his profession. Holly uses complicated mathematical formulas to choreograph routines and performances for high school marching bands. It’s called Drill Design.

Nerd alert!

In reality, Holly is about as successful as they come in the word of drill design—which, be honest, you didn’t even really know was a world. But it’s a world that Holly, now 38, joined full time 10 years ago after quitting his job as a high school math teacher in favor of following his passion.

Since then, his high school hobby has led him across the globe, working with marching bands on both North American coasts, multiple continents and just about every time zone. Holly makes yearly week-long stops in Japan, has toured Europe and at this time of year—football season—works for up to 10 high schools across the country. Holly summarizes simply: “People love marching bands everywhere in the world.”

Holly lives in a Long Beach condo a few blocks from the ocean, but he grew up in the San Francisco Bay area, where he tried to balance his love for music and sports as best he could. But as it became increasingly difficult to do so, he eventually made the decision to pursue marching band full time. “It’s an athletic event,” he says, starting to laugh, “but at the same time I get to play my trumpet and run around and bang some drums.”

Holly went on to attend Fresno State—he made sure to drop a “Go Bulldogs!”—where his math degree led him to the aforementioned high school teaching gig. And although he left the classroom behind in favor of full-time drill design, his math degree was not a waste; in fact, composing the many parts that make up a marching-band routine is based in math and formulas.

“I have an affinity for it, just through skills that I have,” says Holly. “I think my math background really lends itself to this kind of thing, because it really is trying to solve six problems at the same time. So there’s not always an immediate, obvious answer to things. But you kind of work through it—it can be very taxing, mentally.”

Holly has found his niche in drill design by working with schools that make a priority of fielding a highly competitive marching band—and a school has to be pretty dedicated to pay an independent contractor to create original routines, observe the band’s progress, suggest changes and sometimes even fly out to the school for a period of time to work directly with the students.

Long Beach schools are not among Holly’s clients.

“I don’t do any Long Beach schools, only because Long Beach schools are not very good,” Holly says, pauses, and then adds. “That’s not a fair assessment—they’re not typically competitive.”

Long Beach’s lack of emphasis on marching bands fits into a larger theory that Holly has developed.

“I’ve noticed that in Southern California, most of the schools near the water aren’t very competitive in marching band—the kids like to do other things,” he observes. “Most of the strong programs in Southern California are inland.”

The closest city where Holly works is Fountain Valley, and although he has a few other clients in Southern California, his other jobs this football season extend from Texas to Tennessee to Connecticut.

Although each school has different goals and ideas for their program, constructing a successful performance ultimately becomes a balancing act for all those involved (Trumpets twirling or color guard front and center? Decisions, decisions.), especially Holly, who does his best to please his clients, but at the same time reminds them that he is the expert.

“Any time you get a group of creative people together, no one is going to agree,” says Holly. “Every step of the way some compromises are made. There have definitely been times when I wanted to try more advanced, modern things, but directors oftentimes feel comfortable in tradition, so you have to default to that. I make suggestions, and I’ll push to have things the way I think they will be most effective, but it’s the directors of the bands that make the final decisions.”

Holly characterizes his style of drill design as very modern, but at the same time built from tradition. Always looking to try new things and push the boundaries, Holly combines more organic and creative methods of drill design with math and formulas from his teaching days.

Despite Holly’s love of football and heavy involvement with marching bands and halftime performances, don’t expect to see him sitting under the Friday night lights taking in a local football game—or, especially, their halftime shows—anytime soon.

“As part of my gig I could be going to different high school games and halftime shows every Friday night, but I just don’t enjoy it that much,” says Holly. “I tend to be overly critical, just because it’s what I do. I do high-end work, so if there’s a show out there and it’s not of good quality I can not watch. Just because it will aggravate me—bad design and poor execution will just grind my nerves.”

Holly’s predicament may be the equivalent of New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady hitting up his eight-year-old nephew for tips on running the play action. Though that comparison might be a bit far fetched, the more I talked to Holly, the more I noticed the similarities between football and marching band.

Legends of  drill design? Holly named Jay Murphy and Pete Evans as some of the innovators in his game. Offensive and defensive coordinators? Color guard and brass instructors take on those duties. Spread offense, meet asymmetric drill design—a similarly revolutionary idea that for the first time had the band doing different things on opposite sides of the 50 yard line.

But what about the fame that comes along with being a football star? Holly’s accumulated a little of that over the years.

“You achieve some rock-star status,” he says. “Not that you have fan following or anything, but you go places and you see these guys and kids are like ‘Oh, I know who that is!’”

Nerd alert!