Shannon Wilson is quick to describe herself as a “band geek.”

Shannon, 19, graduated from Smiths Station High School and will be a rising sophomore at Stevenson University in Maryland.

A member of the Smiths Station marching band, she hoped to be in the college marching band

There was a problem, though. Stevenson didn’t have a marching band.

And for a Southern “Friday Night Lights” kind of girl, that was hard.

Fortunately this fall, the college will get a football team and Shannon will be instrumental in getting a marching band started.

She’s ready for the challenge.

“We can’t have a football team without a marching band,” Shannon said.

Just before the fall semester started, Shannon was helping the brand-new band director get started and was helping doing the paperwork.

She plays the trombone.

It seems few women play the trombone. But in high school, she said the girls outnumbered the boys.

“A bunch of us wanted to rise against the trend,” she said.

But like other musicians, she started out playing the piano.

This first year, Stevenson’s marching band will play only the home games. After that, she hopes to start playing away games as well.

But she knows that “traveling with a college team is completely different than high schools.”

“We will often go as far as five hours away,” she said. “In high school, it was what, across the (Chattahoochee) river?”

Stevenson will be playing in Division III against seven or eight teams in our conference.

“We’re the new kids on the block,” she said. “It’s a learning experience.”

The Stevenson marching band members will get paid. But it won’t go directly into their pockets. The money will be applied to their tuition, so they’ll get a little bit of a break. And Shannon said the class fee will be waived.

“The class is our rehearsal time,” she said. “We will just show up and play and generally have fun. There are about 50 of us and we’re all upbeat and excited.”

Stevenson is about 20 minutes outside of Baltimore in Owings Mill.

“It’s really quaint and homey,” she said. “I left Phenix City to go to the city, but ended up in Owings Mill.”

Shannon says she misses Country’s Barbecue, but she’s learning to deal with it. Her parents, Danny Mullen and Myoung Wilson-Mullen, still live in Phenix City, so she’ll return regularly for visits.

The famous Maryland crabs? She’s not a fan.

“People out here love them,” Shannon said. “These girls will go through five or six of them. I go through them meticulously and I’ll get maybe a teaspoon of crabmeat out of it. It’s not worth it.”

While she likes Baltimore, she misses “the little secrets and good place to eat at home.”

But she realizes that no matter where she moves, she’ll have to go through the same experiences.

She’s really looking forward to band camp, which starts Aug. 19 and runs through Aug. 24. School starts Aug. 29.