Dave Whaley is the Drumline Director for the newly formed Milligan College Drumline. With no football team or band program, the Milligan Drumline is active all over campus and East Tennessee. Dave is a graduate of Sullivan East High School and East Tennessee State University. While in attendance at ETSU Dave was a member of the Marching Bucs, Indoor Marching Percussion Ensemble, Percussion Ensemble, and Wind Ensemble. Dave has performed at Carnegie Hall and several Percussive Arts Society International Conventions. In 2005, Dave was a member of the ETSU percussion ensemble that took first place in the small ensemble division and won the Fred Sanford Award at the PASIC Marching Festival.

Dave was most recently the Percussion Director at Dobyns-Bennett High School in Kingsport, Tennessee. While there, the percussion ensemble was the first Tennessee school to win the Percussive Arts Society’s Percussion Ensemble Competition (2010). The Wind Ensemble was invited to play at multiple Tennessee Music Educators Association Conventions, Midwest Band and Orchestra Convention (2009) as well as the American Bandmasters Association Convention (2017). The marching band participated in the Macy’s Parade (2011), Tournament of Roses Parade (2014) and Barack Obama’s second Inaugural Parade (2013). In 2014 the marching band was awarded the Sudler Shield becoming one of less than twenty high schools worldwide to be recipients of both the Sudler Flag (2004) and Shield. In 2018 the marching band was also named class AAA National Champion at the Bands of America Grand National Championships.

Dave is an active clinician and adjudicator in the region as well as a percussionist in the Johnson City Symphony Orchestra.

Dave, his wife Jennifer and their two daughters live in Elizabethton, Tennessee where he is also a part-time music minister.