“Go Beacons!”: Pep band pays it forward

UNI pep band supports band-less Valparaiso at Arch Madness tournament

When the UNI pep band received word that Valparaiso University was not bringing a band to the Arch Madness tournament, the story felt all too familiar.

Mary O’Connell, a graduate assistant for the band, leads one of UNI’s pep bands and accompanied the group to St. Louis for the men’s conference basketball tournament.

“Originally, we weren’t slated to go to the conference tournament at all,” O’Connell said. “Then we got really lucky.”

That luck O’Connell referred to came in the form of an anonymous donor. While the pep band was originally not going to attend the conference basketball tournaments due to budget cuts within UNI Athletics, the Northern Iowan reported on Feb. 8 that a donor had stepped in, allowing the band to support the Panthers on the road.

However, the Panthers ended up not being the only team the band supported during the tournament.

On the evening of Monday, Feb. 27, just three days before the

Panthers’ first Arch Madness game, O’Connell received a call from the head of UNI bands, Justin Mertz. Mertz told her that a representative from Valparaiso had reached out to say that they were not bringing a band to the tournament, and they were wondering if UNI’s band would be willing to fill in.

“Considering the circumstances around our travel and how close it was for us to not have a band, we said absolutely, pay it forward,” she said. O’Connell spent the next few days communicating with Valparaiso’s band director and was able to get the music for their school song. However, given the sudden change of plans, the band would be going in cold.

“One thing about pep band is that we only rehearse twice at the very beginning of the season,” she said. “After that it’s just all games. We don’t rehearse again, so we didn’t have a rehearsal to put this together.”

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Nota de la editora : Jocelyn Mena y Valeria Torres son estudiantes del curso SPAN 3159 Translation for Heritage Speakers, dirigido por el Prof. Juan Carlos Castillo.

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