It felt almost obligatory for Devon Mitchell to start taking band classes. 

“Since I can remember, my whole family’s been in a band,” Mitchell said. “It’s kind of like a legacy thing.”

But the Independence senior eventually took on a lot more performance-based activities, not because those were things that he’s always been around growing up, but because he became fascinated with things he discovered for the first time on his own.

Mitchell said he started in third grade playing the recorder. Then he remembers that Erin Shelton, the Director of Bands 6-12 for the Independence school district, visited Mitchell’s elementary school to talk with students about joining the band.

“She had us fill out a paper of what instrument we’d like to play,” Mitchell said. “And bro, I swear I filled out the trumpet spot. Of course, I was like seven years old at the time, so I’m not sure. But when I got the paper back, she said I had become a trombone.

“I was like, ‘Hey, cool I guess.’”

Mitchell, who is the Capitol Federal® True Blue® Student of the Week, is now the trombone section leader in the high school band. He said he’s gravitated toward other instruments during the eight years in-between. Mitchell ended up learning how to play a new instrument at a rate of about one per year in that time, including baritone, piano and ukulele.

Shelton was also the choir teacher at the middle school when Mitchell got there. Mitchell said she created a select choir at that time for the middle school students. He was little surprised when he got in.

“That kind of started my passion for choir and I’ve been in choir for six years now,” Mitchell said.

Mitchell started picking up new activities at a similar speed to picking up instruments. He now participates in band, choir, debate, forensics and has performed in countless stage productions at the high school and beyond.

Mitchell even earned a third-place medal in the KSHSAA Speech and Drama state competition last year. He and Wyatt Blevins took third in improvised duet acting. 

Mitchell said that Blevins does most of the duo’s heavy lifting.

“He carries me… like, quite literally,” Mitchell said. “It’s a lot of physical comedy that we do because he’s very strong.”

Blevins’ ability to lift Mitchell off the ground and toss him around the stage was used to their advantage for remote performances during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“One of our performances, we used the camera screen. … He would pick me up and throw me off screen,” Mitchell said. “I would just be yelling in agony from the side. It was a whole bit.”

Mitchell said the bit worked on the judges, who commented positively on it. Although Mitchell saw advantages to that type of performance, it still took away one of his favorite parts about speech and drama competitions.

“You didn’t get to meet people from other schools,” Mitchell said. “I feel like that’s part of the experience. I’ve certainly made friends from places where I normally wouldn’t have gone. Like, I’ve met a close friend from Parsons.”

Mitchell has definitely seen the traveling aspect as a big benefit for interscholastic activities. Whether it was Florida for a band trip last summer or Topeka for the state forensics competition last year, Mitchell has a consistent favorite part of each trip: the hotel pool.

“I love swimming, it’s so fun,” Mitchell said.

But the beaches in Florida did not provide the same experience as sitting poolside.

“My hair was horrible after that,” Mitchell said. “All my friends said it looked like Shaggy from Scooby-Doo. … I went as Shaggy for Halloween this year. I grew out my facial hair a whole month for that.”

Halloween is a big time of year for band kids in Independence like Mitchell. Or more precisely, Neewollah is a big deal for the entire community.

The Neewollah Festival, which gets its name from spelling Halloween backwards, is an annual festival held in Independence during the last week of October. A tradition that started with providing positive activities for the kids in the community instead of Halloween pranks has turned into one of the largest annual celebrations in Kansas.

“Last year I was in the Neewollah musical, which was Wizard of Oz,” Mitchell said. “I played a couple of roles there.”

Mitchell has adapted many of his band and choir skills for those stage performances, which have increasingly become a big part of his high school experience.

“First semester junior year I did a little ‘All Together Now’ thing,” Mitchell said of a musical production held at Independence Community College. “We just did like one dance from ‘Newsies’ and I was Jack Kelly doing ‘Seize the Day.’

“We had a big tap number. It was good.”

Mitchell already had some experience with “Newsies” as it was his first musical back in freshman year. During sophomore year he got to perform in “Oklahoma.” He said his love for the stage just picked up from there.

Over the summer, Mitchell started performing at the Tyro Christian Church where he performed in a production called Angels Among Us. Mitchell said the performers would dress up in white robes with halos and act out new skits every day for an audience of local kids in Tyro, a small town less than 20 miles away from Independence.

“We would do that in the morning and then at night we would rehearse for ‘Thoroughly Modern Millie,’ which was the third musical I was in,” Mitchell said. “It was actually my first lead. In the musical, I was Ching Ho so I had to learn Mandarin, so that was a tough challenge.”

Mitchell said he received help from a friend who has experience traveling the world and learning multiple languages. Since then, Mitchell has gravitated more to learn French. He said he uses the DuoLingo app to teach himself.

“I got accepted into Pitt State recently, so I’m going to look and see if they have any French classes there, but if not, the app is really good,” Mitchell said.

Mitchell received help from his speech and drama teacher Halle Connors in looking at colleges. He also plans on pursuing becoming an English teacher, a decision that owes no small part to Mitchell taking English classes from Connors.

“I have a lot of friends, but as a teacher, she’s my best friend,” Mitchell said. “I definitely wanted to be a writer, but then I realized being an English teacher is just as good. She’s definitely had an impact on me.”

Many forensics students get into the speech and drama competitions because they started in debate and the teacher, who often coaches both activities, talked them into trying the other activity during the spring semester. For Mitchell, it was really Connors’ English classes that led to him joining the high school musicals and the forensics team.

Mitchell ultimately joined the debate team, but mostly because of Connors. Her and the fact that his math skills made him a suitable candidate for the club’s treasurer. Mitchell holds that role for two other clubs as well, adding in forensics and drama club. He was even the treasurer for the art club for a few years.

“I’m just really good with numbers,” he said. 

Mitchell is so good with numbers that last year he decided to take a senior-level physics course as a junior, before quickly finding out that you needed to already know trigonometry, a course he was just starting. Instead of backing out of the physics class, Mitchell decided to visit the public library and use the resources there to start teaching himself trig.

“I didn’t take physics second semester because I already had all the science credits I needed,” Mitchell said. “But then second semester math rolled around and we were learning trigonometry, only I already knew it.”

The self-teaching allowed him to finish worksheets in record speed, which then left him extra time to attend the choir class held that same hour.

The extra choir practice has paid off for him. Mitchell is in two of the three choirs at Independence. He’s also planning to become the choir teacher’s assistant next semester for the one choir he’s not currently on.

Mitchell will be participating in the district choir auditions at Independence Community College this weekend. Since they will be performing songs that he’s already sung during the choir’s concerts, he’s hoping the familiarity will lead to similar success as he had with last year’s speech and drama competitions.