About The Program

Mission StatementInspiring teamwork, discipline, and respect through the performing arts, in our Central Ohio community.

The Columbus Saints is an Ohio non-profit corporation (formerly Saints Drumline Inc), dedicated to providing affordable performing arts programs for young people while building a strong community through music. The marching arts combines the elements of musicianship, athleticism, and pageantry that allows each member to participate in this life changing activity.

The Saints are focused on the development of our youth, and our community through Social Support, Personal Development, Skills Building and Performance Excellence. It is through these pillars that we strive to build strong, well rounded, healthy, confident and capable young people. We  work tirelessly to ensure affordable access to these opportunities believing that and investment in arts is an investment in the community that can change people’s lives.


Social Support – Becoming a member you enter a long standing network of alumni, and families with a broad diverse level of backgrounds that believes in building each other up.

Personal Development – Each member is part of the team, and learns what it takes to be successful through practice, focus, planning, and more.

Skills Building – Using the marching arts as a vessel for learning, students learn team building, conflict resolution, personal responsibility, value of hard work, performance acumen and more.

Performance Excellence – Developing a culture of excellence in our personal life can be hard. With our program students experience an end to end cycle of planning, learning, validating, and testing applying directly to their life.

Our Values

Christian Jones and his Mother!The Columbus Saints create a positive environment that emphasizes education, friendship, personal responsibility, and team building through the performing arts.

We believe the arts can be transformative for many by providing a creative outlet, supportive social activity, opportunities to learn, a challenging team activity, opportunities to travel,  and friendship.

By creating a fun and family-style environment, members feel comfortable, laughing and making friends, while challenging themselves to be their best “leave it on the field” every time.


Meet the team

Marshall Cheatham

Le Ron Carlton

Liz Steele

Barb Terrell

Our founder’s story

The Saints were founded in 2003 by Mr. Marshall Cheatham; a social worker and juvenile corrections officer in Chicago and Columbus. An alumni of St. Andrew’s Hornet’s Drum & Bugle Corps, Marshall understood how music can change the course of someone’s life. Giving him opportunities to travel, challenge himself, and learn the value of hard work, dedication and more. Playing football at Vanderbilt, eventually graduating with a Degree in Social Work from Tennesee State, Mr. Cheatham spent decades working with local youth.

With the release of the 2002 film “Drumline”, Marshall was moved to share his love of music again. After consulting his pastor, he purchased a few pairs of sticks; hung up posters and began the Saints Drumline with six kids, practicing on a picnic table in a park eventually growing the program into a competitive drum & bugle corps in the vein of CMCC Warriors, Yellow Jackets and other famous African-American lead drum corps.

In 2013, Marshall received the devastating news that his health was in jeopardy as he was in kidney failure; spending the next 5 years attending dialysis 3 times a week, waiting for a transplant. Throughout this time Marshall was always with the Saints; going on trips, attending rehearsals and helping teach so many what it means to work through adversity eventually receiving a transplant in the fall of 2018. Over a year later, Marshall is back at it, working with local youth and still working to change lives through music.

Saints History