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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