The Band To Beat With Perseverance, Cajoling And A Few Good-Natured Bets, Mike Jydstrup Takes His Liberty School District Marching Band To The Top

When Mike Jydstrup’s older brother said he’d shave his mustache and wear a dress to school if his Horizon Junior High band won the Junior Lilac Parade, the younger Jydstrup just had to go one better.

So Mike Jydstrup, the 33-year-old band director for the Liberty School District, south of the Spokane Valley, countered. If his junior high schoolers won, he said, he’d wear a cheerleader’s outfit to school and shave his legs in front of his students.

He didn’t think they’d win. After all, a B division school had never won the grand sweepstakes at Junior Lilac, and his junior highers had never competed on their own.

On May 15, Jydstrup stood in front of a crowd of whooping and cheering seventh- through ninthgraders, a too-tight cheerleader’s outfit stretched across his midriff, dipping a razor repeatedly into a bucket of soapy water and dragging it across his hairy legs.

“He figured he had to compete back,” said older brother Steve Jydstrup, 41, the band director at Horizon Junior High School. “I was tickled to death we didn’t win.”

Both lifelong Valley residents, the brothers are “as close as two brothers can be,” said Steve Jydstrup, but they’re different.

“We’re semi-opposites,” said Mike Jydstrup. “He’s more mature than I am. He’s got more talent than I do. And I’m more immature than he is. That’s the difference.”

The competition between the two schools began about three weeks before Junior Lilac. Lane Farka Jr., one of Mike Jydstrup’s students, told Steve Jydstrup that Liberty was going to “kick Horizon’s butt.”

That’s typical of the monsters created by “Mr. J,” as Mike Jydstrup’s students like to call him. In his band, he’s cloned himself 200 times over, creating a group of jokers who love to win.

Before Junior Lilac began, his students were kicking, teasing and goofing around while other bands tuned instruments and adjusted uniforms.

“The second the parade starts, they’re standing up straight,” Jydstrup said like a proud papa. “They know when to screw around. They know when to stop. These kids love to play.”

Mixing joking with competitiveness seemed the perfect formula to build up Liberty’s fledgling band. When Jydstrup took over in 1986, the band had 15 students, nine in junior high and six in high school.

“His first concert was 12 minutes long,” said Jydstrup’s wife, Wendy, a dental hygienist in the Valley. “I was five minutes late and I missed half of it.”

Fresh out of Eastern Washington University, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in music, Jydstrup sold himself to Liberty on his recruiting abilities.

And his methods worked.

He’d challenge basketball players to one-on-one. If they lost, they’d have to join band.

Jydstrup went undefeated, and the band grew.

He’d also dangle trips to Disneyland in front of prospective band members like the proverbial carrot in front of the donkey. In 1990, the band visited the theme park in California and the Jydstrups videotaped the whole thing.

Every year after that, said close friend and former Liberty basketball coach Denny Gowan, Jydstrup went to the fourth-grade classes to recruit. He’d play the video, Gowan said, then ask who wanted to be in band.

“Me, me, me,” the kids would say.

That’s the only trip the band has taken in Jydstrup’s 10 years at Liberty, although a trip to Canada is slated for next year.

He keeps promising a trip, said Pete Kopplin, a junior and snare drummer. “And he’s fooled a couple of people. He’s fooled more people than (those who) quit band.”

Mostly, say relatives, friends and students, the band grew to 200 strong - out of 600 in the school district- out of love for Mr. J.

“He’s rad,” said Jo Cory, 15. “If we had another coach, I probably wouldn’t be in (band).”

In fifth grade, when Cory joined the band, it was the cool thing to do, she said. “Everybody else was just joining. All my friends were joining.”

“I pretty much just love him,” said Lane Farka Jr, an eighth-grade baritone saxophonist. “We wouldn’t have done this good if we didn’t have him.”

And Mr. J, a boyish man who bounces around like a pinball, rewarded students for joining.

He made band fun.

An incorrigible practical joker, he’d tease and jab at his students. Once, he put fake dog droppings on a student’s chair, then doubled over laughing when she turned bright red.

He stuffed the coat of a shorter coworker up into the tiled ceiling, leaving just a little bit of it handing down so she could see it, but not reach it.

“He’s really 14, mentally and at heart,” said Wendy Jydstrup. “He likes to have a lot of fun, and sometimes his methods are a little unorthodox.”

In Jydstrup’s office, along with prints of a saxophone and a trumpet smoking as if overplayed, is an award from a student that he proudly displays. It reads: “Certified Idiot: for the most idiotic band director.”

With Mr. J, band became an exclusive club that everyone wanted to join.

He organized “Band Day,” at his Pend Oreille River vacation home near Usk, complete with tubing and water-skiing.

Then there was “band basketball.” After a game, the players would leave the court and the band members would come out in their stocking feet and shoot hoops.

If you were in band, you could play. If not, you couldn’t, said Gowan, Liberty’s former basketball coach.

On days when work was finished early, there’d be ice cream parties and videos to watch.

But it wasn’t all a big bash.

Jydstrup challenged his students to be the best they could be. Instead of verbal reprimands, he’d tease and taunt them like a peer if they acted up or didn’t play a piece correctly.

Or he’d just plop himself down next to them and say, “Here’s how it’s done,” and belt out the tune on his trumpet.

The point is to set goals and achieve them, Jydstrup said.

When the marching band took second place for B division bands in the Apple Blossom Festival in 1993, he made sure they returned to claim top prize in 1994.

“I’m the kind of person, if I don’t get something, I come back a year later,” Jydstrup said. “I didn’t want to leave things unfinished there.”

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