I feel like I’ve grown a lot. All of the faculty and my peers are so supportive. They’re looking at your potential, not how good you are at the start. It’s a very growth-focused environment.
At the end of high school, Delaney Hughes, ’26, was relegated to playing the flute over Zoom amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Just a few years later, the BSU student performed a solo near the 50-yard line of an NFL stadium.
Delaney is a member of the Connecticut Hurricanes Drum and Bugle Corps, which played at LucasOil Stadium in Indianapolis for the Drum Corps International world championships. She credits her music-related experiences at BSU with providing the confidence to excel on such a large stage.
“I feel like I’ve grown a lot,” said Delaney, a music education major from Franklin. “All of the faculty and my peers are so supportive. They’re looking at your potential, not how good you are at the start. It’s a very growth-focused environment.”
Flutes have not historically been part of competitive drum corps, which are highly advanced marching bands that emphasize brass and percussion. Thus, Delaney learned how to play percussion when she joined the Hurricanes a few years ago. However, a recent rule change allowed corps to include woodwind soloists, opening the door for the Hurricanes to feature Delaney playing Evanescence’s “Hi-Lo” on her flute.
The Hurricanes “really strive to be an educational drum corps, but we also have really high expectations competitively and we do well in our class,” she said.
That encouraging atmosphere reminds Delaney of life at BSU, where her performance resume includes concerts with the Wind Ensemble and Flute Choir and football games with the Bear Band. She also leads the BSU chapters of the National Association for Music Educators and International Alliance for Women in Music. The latter organization focuses on presenting songs by women composers, and Delaney studied female flute composers through BSU’s undergraduate research program.
Delaney aspires to use her broad musical experience to teach music to elementary students, where she can instill a lifelong love of the art form just as her early music teachers inspired her.
“I really love working with the littler kids,” said Delaney, who worked as a nanny during a gap year between high school and college. “Just to get them excited about music at such a young age so it sticks with them into adolescence and as adults.”
Delaney praised the support and individualized instruction of Donald Zook, who teaches the flute at BSU. In Dr. Sarah McQuarrie’s music education classes, she enjoyed hands-on lessons where students practice teaching each other, making them more prepared to lead their own classrooms.
“I feel more connected to my peers and faculty than a lot of people at other schools might,” she said. “I’ve made lifelong friends and professional connections that I will have with me as a teacher.”
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