Don’t blame the movie, blame their instructor for not teaching them how to modulate their volume. The acoustics in a typical high school gym are terrible and drummers who don’t know how to play softer will not only deafen their audience, but they will also muddy their own sound with all the echoing that occurs. I say that as a former high school drumline geek* whose drumline had a winter season which is all played indoors in gyms. Playing loud, deafening drums in a gym is playing badly.
That said, it’s probably tradition to deafen half the parents and all incoming freshmen during back to school night. Hell, I still have problems hearing low-frequency noises nowadays. “I’m sorry, can you repeat that?” is part of my regular vocabulary.
Quoted for truth.
*I was not a drummer, however, but some of my best friends were drummers.