2016 Away Trip: Pitt vs. PSU

This year's away trip was the Pitt vs. PSU game.  I know, one of the biggest games of the year, and, conveniently, one of the earliest.  As a rookie it was hard enough trying to remember everything for game days, let alone having to do it across the state.  My last two posts were about game day traditions, and, as it turns out, away trips have traditions of their own.

The first one?  The classic bus nap pics.  Everyone has fallen asleep on a bus before, it's kind of hard not to.  But, resist the urge to do so, or your sweet dreams could be advertised for all to see.

Photo credit to Alex Gilgore

Photo credit to Mike Good

Another tradition is bus flips, which is essentially just doing a front flip in the aisle of the bus.  Unfortunately, no one snapped any photos of bus flips this year.

This year, however, one of the buses (luckily not mine) had no air conditioning.  It was in the 90s that weekend, so that made it a long trip to Pittsburgh for the mellophones and sousaphones.  Unfortunately, it also made it a long trip for the rest of us, because all of the other buses stopped while they tried, unsuccessfully, to fix the mello/sousa bus.  The holdup made us all late for dinner, which made for a cranky 320 college students.


After we arrived in Pittsburgh, we had practice at a local high school.  It was really humid outside, and then it started raining, but the rain was almost warm, so we all came out of practice looking like we had just run the New York City Marathon.

Photo credit to Annemarie Mountz

Some of our members are from Pittsburgh, so, naturally, their families came to see them

Photo credit to Annemarie Mountz

After practice, the Blue Band officers presented faculty from the high school with a poster signed by all 320 members of the Blue Band.

Photo credit to Annemarie Mountz

After the practice, we headed to the hotel and ate dinner and just kind of hung out for the night.  Some people went out to see the city of Pittsburgh, some stayed back at the hotel and lounged around, and some went to sleep very early.  Honestly, those people were probably the smartest, because our 6 am wakeup call came very soon.

Game day was a much different story than the night before.  We were all sluggish from lack of sleep, and not particularly excited to see what warm welcomes the city of Pittsburgh and all of the Pitt fans had to say to us.  The first thing we did after getting off of the buses was warm up by section next to the mighty Monongahela.

Photo credit to Annemarie Mountz

As you'd expect, Pitt fans weren't the most friendly towards anyone or anything affiliated with Penn State, including the Blue Band.  As we warmed up next to the Monongahela River, students shouted things not appropriate for young ears at us, to which we responded, "Thank you, go State" with a smile.  Unfortunately, most of their apparel also featured some anti-PSU slurs, so I don't have any pictures of the Pitt fans to show to you.

After we ate our game day subs, we performed at a pregame pep rally

Photo credit to Annemarie Mountz

Things worked a little differently in Pittsburgh than at home.  We did not have any pregame performance time, and they only gave us five minutes at halftime, so the directors decided to perform our pregame show at halftime.  No pregame show meant we went right up into the stands.  We watched the Pitt band pregame performance, and they were very good.  The bands were civil to each other, and that's all that matters, right?

No matter whether you love or hate the Steelers, being in Heinz Stadium was a pretty cool thing to experience.

Photo credit to Annemarie Mountz

As you all know, it was an extremely stressful game, and even though we were allowed to sit, we were all standing for the entire game.  The suspense was heightened by the intermixing of Pitt and Penn State fans throughout the stadium, so no matter what was happening on the field, someone close to you was always yelling.

Nobody had a voice when we came back to University Park the next day.  The 42-39 loss was a tough one, and the ride home was somewhat disheartening, but overall, my first away trip experience with the Blue Band was a great one.

Photo credit to Evan Savage

To view more of Annemarie Mountz's Blue Band photography, click here

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Game Day Traditions: Part Two

Welcome back to Out of the Blue!  As I mentioned in my previous blog post, this week I will be continuing with the Blue Band's game day traditions.  Last week we covered wake up east, game day stretches, the game day sub, and the game day nap.  This week, I will be covering the Alma Mater, F Tuning, parade order, and the murse cookie.

The first game day tradition for this week is the Alma Mater.  If you've ever attended a football game, you know that we play Penn State's Alma Mater during our pregame performance.

Photos credit to Annemarie Mountz

Our director, Mr. Drane, believes in the #BlueBandFamily, so before every game, we sing the Alma Mater together, as one big family.  Then, after we sing the Alma Mater, we all dance outside and sing (the sousaphones play) Beautiful Girls and Stand By Me (they have the same bass line)

The next game day tradition is called "F Tuning".

Photo credit to Annemarie Mountz

This is another trumpet-only game day tradition.  We call this F Tuning because the first note of the exercise is a G on the trumpet, which is a concert F (for more information about how transposition works, click here).  Basically, all of the trumpets stand as pictured above and we play this:

Video credit to Andrew Hill

Just a disclaimer: the video quality isn't spectacular, so the tone is distorted.  We sound much better in person!  After we play this (and blow the socks off of anyone within 100 yards), we all run to our section leaders in the center (this year's section leaders were John Shoener and Andrew Hill) and jump around while they give us an inspirational speech about how well we will play in the game.


The next game day tradition I have for you today is parade order.  I thought long and hard about how to explain parade order, and my conclusion is that I can't (which is ironically what a returnee said to me when I asked what it was).

  Basically, parade order is when we jump and yell things (together, of course) as we march to the stadium for the game.

Photos credit to Annemarie Mountz

Each parade order has one part that is unique to its game, and it typically has to do with the team we are playing.  This year's were:

• "Kent read, Kent write, Kent play football" (Kent State vs. PSU)
• "T for Temple Who?" (Temple vs. PSU)
• "How do you like your toast?  With Blue Band Jam" (Minnesota vs. PSU, referring to Blue Band Jam, a showcase that we performed in before the Minnesota game in the Bryce Jordan Center)
• "Go crawl back in your hole" (also for Minnesota, said after the game)
• "I don't know if you know this, but you can't marry land" (Maryland vs. PSU)
• "If you like the Buckeyes, then you're a nut" (OSU vs. PSU)
• "Hawkeye is the worst Avenger" (Iowa vs. PSU)
• "Is this Sparta? No, this is Patrick" (Michigan State vs. PSU)
• "The Blue Band's in the land of roses" (USC vs. PSU-Rose Bowl)

But don't worry, we play during parade order too!  Here's a video of us coming into Beaver Stadium the first game of the season:

Video credit to Joe Pruss

We parade to the stadium before every game, so next season stop by the O. Richard Bundy Blue Band Building (or the orbbbb, as we call it) before you head to the stadium and listen to us scream at each other (and sometimes you!)!

The fourth and final game day tradition I have for you today is the murse cookie.  Now, you may be asking yourself, what is a murse?  A murse is a contraction of the words "marching purse"; since the Blue Band leaves to play at halftime and there are so many of us, there is no way that we can all return to the spot in the bleachers we were standing before halftime, so we take our belongings with us. Murses are very fashionable and look like this:

Photo credit to Annemarie Mountz

So we've covered the murse, but what about the cookie?  The cookie actually comes from the game day sub meal.  Every game day, we get a sub, apple, bag of chips, cookie, and bottle of water.  The cookies are the best part.  Everyone loves them, and if you have a chance to get an extra, you don't pass it up.  A lot of people like to save their gameday cookies for third quarter, because unlike high school band, we don't get the third quarter off, and by that time we're pretty hungry.  Murse cookies are like the little treat we get to reward ourselves for making it that far.

That's all I have for game day traditions folks!  If you come to a game next semester, stop by the orbbbb and check us out!  Our practices, f tuning and parade are open to the public!

To view more of Annemarie Mountz's Blue Band photography, click here

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