COLUMBUS, Ohio — Sydney Reeves remembers going to her first Ohio State game as a little girl, mostly to watch the band. Her parents were proud marching band alums, and every year they would march as part of the band alumni game — when former members come back to perform alongside current members.

Sydney’s grandparents, season-ticket holders since 1964, would point out the spot where her parents each made history. In 1992, Wendy Reeves dotted the i, then one year later her husband, Chad, did it, making them the first married couple to “dot the i” in Script Ohio, one of the most recognizable traditions in college football.

Mesmerized as the band marched perfectly to spell “Ohio” in script, Sydney waited for the person tabbed to dot the i that day to strut to the top of the letter, take their hat off and bow to the roar of the crowd. She thought to herself, “I don’t know when or how, but I’m going to do this.”

And if anyone was destined to dot the i, it was Sydney Reeves. She got her first introduction to music at 2 weeks old, when Wendy, a band director, sat her in her baby carrier at middle school band rehearsal. At 2, Reeves asked for a little tuba to keep under her bed. At 8, she knew she wanted to follow in her parents’ footsteps as an Ohio State sousaphone player.

In the years in between, her parents told her stories about their marching band experiences. Chad and Wendy met in the band, naturally. He proposed during an Ohio State skull session, the term for the warmup pep rally that the band puts on before every home game. Chad told everyone in the band, plus Wendy’s family members, what was going to happen without revealing his secret to her until he got on one knee. Wendy, astounded, remembers turning around and seeing family with signs reading, “Wendy, be my tuba for life!”

She said yes. They married in December 1992 and played their sousaphones at the wedding.

As children growing up, Sydney and her older sister, Samantha, would watch the proposal over and over on VHS tape. They would watch the wedding, too, specifically the part when their parents played Ohio State songs. On the anniversaries of the days they each dotted the i, Chad and Wendy would take out another set of VHS tapes and play those, too.

Samantha did not have much interest in doing band in college. But Sydney had already decided she wanted to follow in her parents’ footsteps. So when she got to middle school and walked into her mom’s band room, there was no discussion about what instrument she would play.

AT EVERY BUCKEYES home game since 1936, the 225-member Ohio State marching band has spelled out “Ohio” in script. To put the iconic finishing touch on the word, a senior sousaphone player is selected to strut to the top of the i and dot it.

“A moment of glory,” Wendy says.

But, originally, dotting the i wasn’t much of an honor, Christopher Hoch, the director of marching and athletic bands at Ohio State, said. The first i dotter was “an afterthought.”

“It was an E-flat cornet player — the smallest instrument in the band,” Hoch said. “The next time they did the Script Ohio, the band director at the time decided, ‘We need something that’s a little bit more visible, a little bit more flashy.’ So, they went from the smallest instrument in the band to the largest instrument. You can clearly see that giant sousaphone bell every time the i dotter struts to the top of the i now.”

The sousaphone is a tuba variant created in the nineteenth century at the direction of John Philip Sousa. It wraps around the marcher so that its weight can be carried by the player’s shoulder rather than their arms. But generally, before anyone learns how to march holding the 35- to 40-pound instrument, they learn how to play the tuba. That was tough sledding for Sydney, who said with a laugh, “It took a lot of air.”

“It took a lot of time, and practice, and patience to be able to get myself going in sixth grade.”

Luckily, she had two experts at home. Wendy taught Sydney how to play the tuba, and once she got to high school, Chad helped teach her how to march with the sousaphone. Marching in high school is one thing, though. Making the Ohio State marching band is another.

About 400 people try out for the band each year. But even if you make the cut one year, there are no guarantees you make it the next. Sometimes veterans lose their spots. The tryout requires a music audition and a series of four marching auditions, plus 30 minutes of simultaneous marching and playing in front of the band staff.

“Students spend an entire summer working out, practicing, trying to get all their marching fundamentals right, trying to get their music learned,” Hoch said.

That is exactly what Sydney did going into her freshman year in 2021. She attended all the summer practice sessions at Ohio State. Chad and Wendy would go, too, watching and giving her feedback. Then Sydney would go home to practice with her parents some more.

Sydney thought she was well prepared when she tried out, but she did not make the band. Crushed, she turned to her parents again. Chad took her out to the high school field whenever Sydney came home so they could practice.

“We would march up and down the field, trying to perfect all the fundamentals,” Sydney said. “It was just really cool being able to see that he could still do it all, and do it better than me.”

SYDNEY CALLS CHAD her “best friend” and her “rock.” They would sing “You are My Sunshine” in the car on the way to school when she was a little girl. Whenever she needed a hug, she would go to him, because he gave the best hugs. But there were also hard moments for the Reeves family.

Chad struggled with addiction, and Sydney described “good days and bad days” growing up.

“The good always outweighed the bad,” Sydney said. “It didn’t matter what was happening. If he needed help, we helped. It was very important to us that he knew that he was so loved.”

Added Wendy: “Every family has struggles of one kind or another. It just depends what struggle becomes yours. It doesn’t make a person a bad person. It doesn’t take anything away from their successes.

“But I think the challenge in a family comes from wanting that person to find their personal best, to find their success in recovery. Chad worked very, very hard at recovery. We, as a family, supported that.”

Sydney was at Ohio Stadium in November 2021 for a sorority event when she got a phone call and learned that her dad was in the hospital. He was found unresponsive at home. By the time she arrived, Chad had died, from an accidental drug overdose. He was 51.

“It was heartbreaking, because you never want to lose a parent, and you never want to lose a parent at a young age especially,” Sydney said. “But we knew that he was safe and that everything was going to be OK.”

They held the funeral on a football Saturday. Wendy told everyone to wear scarlet and gray. So many people came to pay their respects, including friends from the time Chad and Wendy spent in the band. At the reception, they streamed the Ohio State game, just as Chad would have wanted.

Sydney returned to school two weeks after his passing, more determined than ever to make the band in her sophomore year. She doubled down on her efforts to get in good physical shape and perfect her music and marching. In her mind, Sydney could hear her dad repeating his favorite line:

To give anything less than your best is to sacrifice the gift.

“The memories and the drive that he gave me on those days that we practiced, I took those, and I would do the things that he would tell me,” Sydney said. “They would repeat in my mind and I’d be like, ‘OK, you’ve got to focus. You’ve got to do this.’ I would always say his favorite quote before I do pretty much anything. That really just calmed my nerves and got me ready.”

All that work paid off. Sydney made the band. As long as she continued to improve and make the band every year she was at Ohio State, Sydney knew she would be in position to one day dot the i. The honor is reserved for senior sousaphone players, so some years there is more competition than others. There are 28 total sousaphone players in the band — 24 who march and four alternates. Some years, there will be enough home games for each senior to get a chance to dot the i, and other years, some people will miss out. (This year, there are seven senior sousaphone players.)

“The i dot selection process is kind of complicated,” Hoch said. “There is a rank-order system based on the number of performances that you have marched as a regular band member.”

With that in the back of her mind, Sydney prepared for her first game, in 2022. At the skull session, Wendy presented Sydney with a gift: a Buckeye on a string that Chad wore when he marched in the band.

“This was papa’s,” Wendy told Sydney.

Sydney put it on underneath her uniform, and as she and her fellow band members went down the ramp and onto the field to perform, she cried.

“Because I was doing this thing that I had always wanted to do, that my parents got to do, and that I was making all of my family proud,” she said.

“To anyone outside of the Ohio State family, it might seem silly, a nut on a string, right?” Wendy said. “But for her, it would be like getting something that was very meaningful of his. It is a link to his time in the band, and it was moving for her, and she was thrilled to have it.”

The string started to fray as she wore it that year, so Sydney put it away until later. She didn’t want to wear it again until she got her chance to dot the i.

SYDNEY LEARNED THIS past April she would dot the i on October 4 against Minnesota. So, she got to work, focused on perfecting the tradition’s trademark strut.

She practiced in her backyard, and her mom would tape her, then break down the tape step by step — just like a football coach. Then in July, Sydney started practicing with the drum major, who leads the sousaphone player to the i.

“You’re kicking your legs out in front of you with a little bit of a leaning back motion, and you do about 16 of them to get to the spot from the bottom of the O,” Sydney said. “That is the most challenging part of the entire day, because it’s not something that we normally do, and it’s heavy, and you’re thinking, ‘I have to control my breathing, because I have to play.'”

Sydney learned she would have a practice run of sorts when she found out she would be one of multiple i dotters for the alumni game on Sept. 6 against Grambling. What made that day extra special was having her mom, aunt and uncle — all band alums — on the field marching with her.

That experience was great, but against Minnesota, she would have the spotlight all to herself.

And now, Sydney Reeves from Dublin, Ohio, brings this 89-year tradition back to halftime. The incomparable Script Ohio.

Sydney and the band had just completed their halftime performance. Now the public address announcer told the crowd that she would be closing things out. Sydney had to focus on every step, every move, every fundamental she had been coached on over the years.

Wendy watched from the stands, clasping her hands, saying, “Come on, little one! Come on, little one!” counting down in her head exactly what Sydney had to do and when.

When the band finished looping the final O, Sydney followed the drum major, one strut at a time. She dotted the i and bowed, betraying little emotion. But tucked under her uniform she could feel the buckeye. She felt her dad’s embrace, his encouragement, his courage, one generation connected to the next — a legacy firmly planted on the Ohio Stadium turf.

“I do feel like it brought me closer to him,” Sydney said. “Being able to have this thing that he also was able to have is really awesome. It would’ve been even more special if he could be there in person. But it was very special that I had his buckeye, and I had his memories.

“And I knew that he was looking down on me.”

After years of dreaming and waiting, it was over, just like that. Wendy turned around in the stands to a legion of high-fives and well-wishers, who told her, “You did it, mom!”

“I hadn’t done anything except stand there and watch her dot the i,” Wendy said.

But that, of course, is not true. When Wendy decided at age 11 that she wanted to play the tuba and dot the i in the Ohio State marching band, few women had gotten that opportunity. That decision ultimately inspired her daughter to make history right alongside her parents.

With her i dot, Sydney became the first child of two people who had previously dotted the i at Ohio State to also dot the i.

“It is a dream that you have your whole life, so being able to accomplish that dream is like nothing you could imagine,” Sydney said. “In that moment, it’s this fairy tale that you see in movies, and you get to keep those memories for the rest of your life.”

Sydney gave her mom a big hug when she got back into the stands. But Wendy had already sent her a text message, right after the halftime show ended.

“Sweet dot, baby.”