- December 13, 2025
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At 60 years old, Windermere’s Holly Marino and her 63-year-old husband, Ralph Marino, stepped onto the field with instruments in hand ready to play for the first time in years.
The Marinos were prepared to do whatever it took to ensure their drum corps, Fusion Core, was set up for success as they started the group from scratch this year in Florida — even if that meant marching themselves.
“I don’t know what we were thinking, but it was the best,” Holly Marino said.
The couple decided to move their drum corps from New Jersey to Florida this year after years of supporting Fusion Core, an all-ages drum corps they started in 2007, from a distance.
After a successful season of rebuilding the program in Central Florida, becoming a finalist in the All Age Circuit at the DCI World Championship Finals, Fusion Core is looking ahead to next season with hopes of growing its corps family and providing more competitive opportunities.
Holly and Ralph Marino started Fusion Core in 2007 in New Jersey with a few colleagues.
Marino grew up marching in an all-girls corps and met her husband when boys were added to the corps.
They noticed young kids couldn’t afford to participate in the bigger corps, but they wanted an outlet, so they started their own.
Since its inception, Fusion Core only has been held on the weekends, allowing for adults to work during the week and students to participate in other band programs.
Four of Marino’s six children joined her and her husband in the drum corps as percussionists; she and Ralph Marino both were brass players.
“It was like a true family affair,” Holly Marino said. “We wanted to make the foundation of everything we do a family environment. It sounds so cliché, but we’re really like a family.”
Once the COVID-19 pandemic hit, the Marinos started to change their tune. Being a huge Disney fan, Ralph Marino began dreaming of a move to Florida. Their kids were older and in college or graduated, and they felt it was time to make the move. Ralph Marino has his own business and could work from anywhere.
They made the leap, and some of the kids even followed suit with their families.
But the drum corps still was in New Jersey, so Holly Marino was traveling back every summer to continue to serve as a leader in the corps. Ralph Marino would travel back on certain weekends.
As a result, Holly Marino said Fusion Core started having a “little bit of an identity crisis,” because the couple was so passionate about the organization and was able to dedicate a lot of time to it, but after the move, they couldn’t be as invested in person.
“It’s a seven-days-a-week, 365-days-a-year commitment,” she said. “Toward the middle of the 2024 season, I really felt that it needed to be here with us, that we could really give it that attention that it needed. … We ended up on a wing and a prayer moving it down here.”
Rebuilding a drum corps was not easy, especially given drum corps aren’t as popular and well known in Florida as they are up north.
With the help of friends who are drum corps alumni, Holly Marino said they were able to kickstart Fusion Core in Orlando, but it was a slow start.
When they hosted their open house, there only were 12 people who showed up. Of the 12, only two were brass players.
Throughout the season, the corps worked on its recruitment efforts. It is not restricted to any particular part of Florida, so Fusion Core recruited people from throughout the Sunshine State. Students from high schools in Vero Beach, Windermere, Jupiter and The Villages participated last season.
The corps ended the season with 48 members, just big enough to meet the required minimum of 40 to compete.
Fusion Core’s first Florida show was “Mended.” She said the corps sometimes felt a little broken. With different people getting involved and changing the direction, the corps began losing its identity in New Jersey. The move to Florida made the Marinos and other staff realize they weren’t completely broken, they just wanted to be mended.
“Nobody’s journey is smooth sailing — not in life, not in anything we do,” Holly Marino said. “So the fact we hit some bumps in the road is normal, but the fact we were able to keep it together was beautiful.”
Holly Marino considered that itself was an accomplishment, but to put a cherry on top of it all, the small but mighty group was a finalist in the championships.
After months of grueling work to get the corps up and running in Florida, Holly Marino recalled the first night the group finished running through its show in its entirety. As the sun set, they sang their corps song, “For Good” from the musical “Wicked.” It was a tradition carried down from Fusion Core’s beginning in New Jersey.
They achieved what they thought might be impossible. They created a drum corps in Florida, which Holly Marino said is a place where corps go to die because of the weather and the lack of popularity.
“We sing, ‘I’ve heard it said that people come into our lives for a season’ instead of for a reason, and then the rest of it is, ‘Bringing something we must learn,’” Holly Marino said. “We’re all sitting there and we’re appreciating so many things. I feel like I’ve been changed for good. I’d say we definitely changed for the better.”
Holly Marino wants every corps member to come out of a season feeling like they have changed for the better.
So when she heard “For Good” sprinkled into the closing music of their show “Mended,” she cried. She knew everyone understood the mission of the corps, helping those involved to feel accepted and have a place to call home, a family.
Holly Marino is hoping to grow the Fusion Core family and have at least 75 participants for this upcoming season.
The beauty of being an all-ages corps is everyone is learning, no matter the age.
The older participants serve as mentors to the young ones, and the young ones can teach the older participants about the newer generations, bridging the generational gap.
Holly Marino said the younger participants helped her and her husband learn how to become better at reading music while they taught young participants how to play loud, broaden their techniques and more.
“They get a kick out of the fact that we’re old, but we can march, and then we admire watching them grow,” she said.
Diego Rivera, a 16-year-old snare drummer from East Ridge High School in Clermont, said he wouldn’t be the musician he is today without Fusion Core as the group helped him improve his skills, including better playing and marching technique. He also learned life skills such as time management, how to practice efficiently and how to fully commit to a program.
At only 16 years old, Rivera was the youngest on the snare line. He felt he was marching with experts.
“Having that much experience right in front of you is like an open book,” Rivera said. “It’s literally the best source of information you could ever have, because they know what they’re doing, and all you have to do is just follow them and do exactly what they’re trying to achieve. Slowly but surely, you’ll get to their level soon enough.”
Sean Bilby has his family because of Fusion Core. He met his wife, who is Holly and Ralph Marino’s daughter, through the corps back in New Jersey. He was inspired to join the corps again when he saw how dedicated the Marinos and other staff members were to the corps in Florida as several staff members jumped in to march so they could have the numbers for the season.
At 35 years old and not used to the Florida heat, getting back into marching was not an easy task for Bilby, but seeing high school students to the Marinos, who are in their 60s, pressing on made him say he could do it, too.
“It’s very difficult for the older members to keep up with the amount of talent these new kids have, because they’re amazing,” Bilby said. “I mean these kids are in high school, and they’re marching shows 180 beats a minute and memorizing all their drill music in one weekend. I’m like, man, this took me six months last time I did this, holy cow.”
While the high school students played basketball or were singing and joking around during breaks, Bilby said he learned quickly that at his age, he needed to prioritize sleep and food to ensure he could keep up with the long days of practice on the weekends.
He walked away from the season having a deeper appreciation for resiliency as he saw older members not giving up but also feeling rejuvenated from the younger members, with a hope for the new generation.
“I’m excited to see what Fusion has in store for the future because this year was really the cornerstone of our starting season, and it was amazing to see what we went through,” Bilby said.
