This evening, the Gretna East Pep Band will represent The University of Northern Iowa (UNI), who is 25-5, by filling in for their band at the NCAA Division I Women’s Volleyball Championship during their game at 4:30 p.m. at Creighton’s D.J. Sokol Arena in Omaha against The University of Utah (15-14). The pep band will continue to follow UNI’s team throughout the tournament, if the team advances.
“I’m excited for this opportunity to perform for UNI,” senior Nicholas Delaigle said. “I think that as a third-year band program, it speaks to our ability to have a college reach out to us and ask us to play and represent their team.”
Michelle Bolte, Director of Volleyball Operations at UNI, reached out on Tuesday with the invitation to play today and offered the band program a donation for performing for them.
“It was a really exciting opportunity,” Assistant Band Director William Holke said. “It’s not very often that we get to travel somewhere else to play for a different team, for a pep band. I thought it was a very exciting opportunity, and such a generous offer that they are going to donate some money to our band program for getting to play for them.”
While excited, Holke had some concerns about accepting the offer.
“The first thing that went through my head was ‘let’s see if we have enough students to go first,’” Holke said. “I quickly set up a Google Form to see how many students could go and immediately got a bunch of responses.”
The band jumped at the opportunity.
“This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that not many schools get to do,” senior Madelynn Baker-Klassen said. “It’s not every day you get invited to perform at a university event, so it means a lot.”
Bolte contacted the Griffin Pep Band thanks to connections UNI has with Athletic Director Matthew Fritsche.
“Mr. Holke was so on it that we actually got our band arranged and got everything done very quickly,” Fritsche said. “It was just a situation where one of my friends had a daughter that plays there, and they wanted the support because Northern Iowa’s band couldn’t make the trip. I was excited about it, because what an awesome opportunity to showcase our band at a division one volleyball game in front of a bunch of people; it should be fun.”
The UNI Pep Band was unable to make the trip due to budget constraints.
“The label for these sports is kind of unfortunate, but sports like womens volleyball are called non-revenue sports,” Justin Mertz, UNI Associate Professor of Music and Associate Director of Bands, said. “The cost to send teams to all these various away games and postseason tournaments grows and grows every year, and athletic department budgets are stretched thinner and thinner every year. So it’s very difficult for any university to send bands to events like this.”
Turning to local high schools is a common way these sports get more representation.
“There’s a network of people around in each area who are involved in the sports and music scene, and they kind of recommend schools. When word of mouth gets to a university that there’s a band that can handle something like this on short notice and is good enough and is willing to do it, that’s how they’ll identify schools to pick.”
However, there are some challenges with having such a quick turnaround.
“My only concern is that they gave us the fight song for the University of Northern Iowa yesterday, so we have to learn it in two days,” said Hulke on Wednesday. “Otherwise, it’s gonna be a great time.”
Band members echoed his feelings.
“I’m nervous about potentially messing up their fight song,” Baker-Klassen said. “A fight song is more than a short 30-second school song; it can represent something truly meaningful. A fight song is never for yourself or even a school; it’s for the community. You never know who’s out there listening and how much it truly means to them.”
The fight song isn’t the only concern band members have.
“I’m nervous about playing in the environment of a college sports game for the first time ever, representing another program and school completely and learning their fight song in a day, then playing it in front of the crowd,” senior Emma Jaros said. “As cool as it is, there’s always a bit of nerves that come with any performance you have. Whether it’s a huge concert or playing a fight song at a pep band game, we’re making music and trying to put our best performance out there.”
This also caused band practices to be switched up from their original plans. Today, band students practised the UNI fight song for a portion of class instead of focusing solely on their concert music for the full class.
Though the UNI fight song was new to them, Holke says it will be like any other performance.
“Really, the biggest difference is that we just won’t get to play our fight song there,” Holke said. “The rest will stay the same. We’ll be happy, we’ll be peppy, we’ll be cheery, we’ll play loud, cheer loud.”
If the UNI team wins tonight, they will play Creighton (25-5) tomorrow at 6:30 p.m. at the D.J. Sokol Arena, and the Griffin Pep Band will play again.
