At the Marion County School Board meeting Monday night, Mike Garnard was approved as the new band director at West Marion replacing Ryan Pippin. Pippin accepted a job as the assistant band director of the 6A school Petal.
In an unknowingly ironic twist, Garnard comes from Petal, having retired in 2019 as the head band director of Petal High School, a position he was in for 16 years. When Garnard interviewed for the job at West, he had no idea that Pippin had left West to go to Petal.
“It’s amazing how God lines up the universe,” he said.
Garnard decided after a few months that retirement was not for him.
“I stepped away from teaching for a few months and decided to get back into it and found a really cool place,” he says about West Marion.
Garnard in a phone interview Wednesday said he has worked his way through the ranks, being a band director at a 1A school all the way to large 6A bands. He is originally from Jackson, Tenn. Around February, he said the Lord told him he needed to start looking around and teaching again.
“He led me to West Marion High School. It is pretty exciting,” he said.
With the former director and the new director in a sense “swapping positions,” Garnard said he actually just met Pippin this week for the first time.
Garnard said of the band, “I watched this progression from 2015 to where it was 2019 and I told him, he had done a great job.”
Despite teaching and working with a much larger band, he said he is really looking forward to working at West. One of the things that played a role in his decision to come was the administrators. When he was interviewing with them, he could tell they were very passionate about the band program and wanting it to succeed.
Planning is difficult at the moment with the pandemic. Once everything opens back up, he knows he needs to do some color guard try-outs and find instructors for the color guard and percussion. However, Garnard said the goal is not to disrupt the structure Pippin has already built but to enhance it.
Garnard said Pippin spoke very highly of the band students and how the students really do enjoy band. Garnard said he wants to continue that process.
