College senior finds harmony as a faith leader, drum major of Notre Dame’s band

Kimberly Ortiz-Morales, left, a 2023 graduate of Father Michael Shawe Memorial High School in Madison, is one of the three drum majors this year for the marching band of the University of Notre Dame in northern Indiana. She shares a joyful moment from last year with Emma Ellis, who is also a drum major this year. (Submitted photo)

By John Shaughnessy

She had been waiting anxiously for the news for weeks, ever since she knew she was one of the eight finalists for the three coveted positions.

In her family’s kitchen with her parents, her younger sister and her little brother, 21-year-old Kimberly Ortiz-Morales was finally ready to click on the e-mail that would let her know her fate—similar to an e-mail she had received three years earlier.

Back then, Ortiz-Morales was a recent graduate of the Class of 2023 of Father Michael Shawe Memorial High School in Madison. She had just arrived as a student at Saint Mary’s College in northern Indiana, across the street from the University of Notre Dame. Part of the marching band at Shawe, she hoped to become a member of Notre Dame’s marching band, but after two days of practice, she wasn’t sure she wanted to continue.

She had come from a graduating class of 38 at Shawe, and here she was auditioning for a band where there are usually more than 380 members from around the country and the world.

“It was really scary going into a big band where I really didn’t know anyone,” she recalls. “I was meeting new people, and I was learning, and I was very overwhelmed. People were very friendly and they were helping me out, but I was scared they weren’t going to like me. I felt it wasn’t for me. I almost didn’t go that Saturday because I was so overwhelmed.

“I called my friends from back home, and they told me to go to my last day of auditions because you never know what’s going to happen. If it wasn’t for their motivation, I don’t think I would have kept going, but I did.”

She went to the third practice. The next day, she felt she had given a great, final audition playing the piccolo. Then she waited for the e-mail that would come the next morning before the first day of school.

When she opened the e-mail that day in late August of 2023, a surge of joy rushed through her.

“It was just something so big that a small Hispanic girl from Madison made this huge band four hours away from home,” she says three years later, the emotion of that moment still fresh for her.

Right away that day, she called Shirley Kloepfer, one of her mentors and the director of La Casa Amiga, an organization that works with the Hispanic community in Madison. She phoned her parents, Abelina Morales-Galvez and Werclain Ortiz-Gonzalez. And the word soon spread around the Shawe community after she called Phil Kahn, the president of Prince of Peace Schools in Madison.

“They were all very proud of me,” she says. “I was overjoyed.”

Now, it was an early January morning in 2026 as she prepared to open another e-mail, this time in her family’s kitchen in Madison.

This e-mail would inform her whether or not she had been chosen as one of the three drum majors for the Notre Dame marching band—one of its top three student leaders—for the 2026 football season.

I knew it was coming,” recalls Ortiz-Morales, the middle of her parents’ five children. “My parents already knew I was panicked. My little sister was going off to cheer practice, and she’s been a big supporter of mine. She told me, ‘Don’t tell me until I get back.’ She didn’t want me to text her. When she got home, we checked.

“I was shaking and crying.”

She had been selected—only the fourth Saint Mary’s student to become a drum major for the Notre Dame marching band in its 181-year history.

In a way, it is her version of the American dream, as a member of a family that came to America from Mexico for a better life.

“It feels very special,” she says as the season nears. “The past three years I’ve been in this marching band, I’ve made it a huge goal to be friends with everyone. It means so much to me to have my peers love and trust me to have that position of drum major, to be able to lead them during march-outs and game days.”

Ortiz-Morales will make her debut as a drum major when the Notre Dame band plays during the football game between the Irish and the University of Wisconsin on Sept. 6 at Lambeau Field in Green Bay, Wis.

“Kimi has an incredibly magnetic personality that just draws people into her,” notes Sam Sanchez, associate director of the Notre Dame band. “During rehearsals, she always smiles or shares funny stories that make people laugh and relax. Her conducting and marching skills are excellent, but it is her magnetic personality that makes her a strong leader.

“Kimi has shown incredibly strong competence as a drum major. Our band staff is excited and thinks she is going to be amazing this fall.”

Leaving her mark

Beyond leading the band toward the stadium and onto the football field, drum majors have certain responsibilities when the band performs.

“It’s starting the band,” Ortiz-Morales notes. “They’re looking up to you to know when to start. And if they can’t find the beat, they look up to you to get it.

“I just very much enjoy hearing the music my peers make coming at me, me being the beat, me being the reason they’re able to keep it together. I just love the sound coming toward me from the people I have grown close to.”

Her desire to become a drum major reflects a combination of her experiences at Shawe, Saint Mary’s and Notre Dame.

“Shawe is a very close-knit community,” she says. “I knew everyone was there for me. We all knew each other and had gone to school together since we were little. And because it was small, it was easier for teachers to reach out to us students and help us more. They were really supportive in any decision I made.”

One of the places where she left her mark at Shawe was in the marching band. Growing up in a musical family where many people had talents playing piano and guitar, she chose a different route, playing the flute and joining the marching band in the seventh grade of the junior/senior high school.

“On her first day, she looked like she had been marching for years,” says Bill Gordon, Shawe’s director of bands. “After playing flute for three years, she auditioned and became our drum major and remained in that position until she graduated.”

Gordon adds that she continues to help every summer when the Shawe band has its two-week camp. This summer, she took on three roles, teaching marching fundamentals and helping the drum major and the flute section.

“She is a born leader who is well-liked by everyone she meets,” Gordon says.

She has taken that combination to Saint Mary’s, where she is majoring in elementary education.

“I wanted to go to a small college. I like the Catholic aspect. The small school aspect. The all-girls college,” she says.

Those qualities of Saint Mary’s have been complemented by the opportunities of being part of Notre Dame’s marching band.

“We have a great community up there, especially my section, the piccolo section,” she says. “What I enjoy most is coming out of the tunnel and onto the field at Notre Dame Stadium. Marching onto the field on game day will be forever marked in my memory.

“And just getting to travel with the band is incredible. Two years ago in my sophomore year, in 2024, we traveled to New York, New Orleans, Miami and Atlanta. It’s very fun. I don’t get to travel a lot. When we do as a family, it’s to visit family. So, getting to travel to big cities and getting to experience different cultures in America while also getting to perform in the biggest stadiums is just incredible.”

So is one other important part of her life—her desire to share her faith and her relationship with Christ with others.

I’ve felt surrounded by that love’

While her family and her experiences at Shawe prepared her well to become a leader of Notre Dame’s marching band, that combination has also led her to a leadership role in campus ministry at Saint Mary’s.

“Back home, I would train servers, and I was a server and a eucharistic minister,” says Ortiz-Morales, a member of Prince of Peace Parish in Madison. “I enjoyed my religion classes at Shawe, and I was a retreat leader. When I went to Saint Mary’s, I got very involved in campus ministry, just going to their events and retreats. At the end of my sophomore year, they sent out an application for leaders.

“I had missed being a leader at church. So, when I saw the opportunity, I sought it out. Saint Mary’s didn’t have a Hispanic minister, so I wrote that that would be lovely to have. I was able to be the Latino minister last year. It was very rewarding to reach out to Hispanics and Latinos at Saint Mary’s.”

That outreach—and her role as a peer minister this year—gives her the opportunity to help people draw closer to Christ, an outcome she continues to pursue in her own life.

“Christ has been a big part of my life, and I’ve been lucky enough to have been introduced to God. Ever since I was little, I’ve felt surrounded by that love,” she says.

“I’ve also experienced people who have not been surrounded by that love or have thought they’ve been betrayed by that love. So, being able to reach out and tell people that they are loved is important to me. Introducing my religion to people has really been amazing. Something that’s really big about campus ministry at Saint Mary’s is radical hospitality. We welcome everyone and tell them to come as they are.”

The people who know Ortiz-Morales well praise the way she tries to create harmony among the different notes of her life.

Marching toward a season of hope

“Kimberly has always been so positive and happy when you see her,” says Kahn, the president of Prince of Peace Schools in Madison. “She is a very motivated young lady. She has a strong faith, and her family is very important to her. All those qualities have helped her reach heights we are all proud of. We always knew Kimberly would go on and do great things, but she started that journey right away.”

The best part of the journey for Ortiz-Morales is sharing it with the people who touch her life and the people she strives to touch.

She thinks back to the friends who encouraged her when she had doubts as a freshman trying out for the Notre Dame marching band.

“I’m so glad they gave me that motivation.”

She looks ahead to a senior year of leading her fellow musicians and her fellow students on their shared journey of faith—a journey that begins with some anxiety and an abundance of belief.

“There’s more learning to do,” she says about being a drum major. “I’m scared, but I’ve been told that when you’re scared, it’s because you care about it.

“Something I always aspire to is to see people grow in something I know they’ll learn to love. So just being there for them and helping them every step of the way, it’s just very rewarding.”

As she strikes up the band, Ortiz-Morales marches toward a season of hope, joy and faith. †