WVU vs. UCONN Away Trip 2008 Blog

Somehow I managed to sleep like a log and awoke 6 ½ hours later in New Jersey, looking across the water to see bright lights and huge buildings. As soon as I realized how close we were, I was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed; I’ve never been so awake and energetic at 6 o’clock in the morning!
 
We were warned that we had to be ready to jump off the buses as soon as we pulled over, so my friends and I gathered our few belongings we were taking with us for the day and were the first ones off Bus 5. Our first stop in the city was FOOD! We stopped at a little restaurant called Andrew’s Café which was just around the corner from Macy’s. The food wasn’t great but it was neat eating in a quaint and friendly local eatery instead of a mainstream restaurant like IHop or Cracker Barrel. It was different and a great way to start our day.
           
After breakfast we weren’t sure where we were, what we wanted to do, or really where to begin planning our day. So we headed for Times Square. It was only 7:30 in the morning but the amount of people on the streets was overwhelming for me. I’m not a small town country girl or anything; I’m from the Eastern Panhandle so I’ve been to Baltimore and Washington, D.C. more times than I can count, but this was a different kind of environment than I had ever experienced.

At 8 o’clock, we loaded our buses near Macy’s and headed out of the City. After seven hours on a bus and fourteen hours in one of the biggest cities in the world, my friends and I were out within minutes of leaving the city.

Once we arrived at the stadium, we performed for the fans at the alumni tent which ignited our gameday spirit. It’s always exciting to see fans travel a ways to see our football team play, and we always feel welcome in unknown territory when we spot a sea of gold and blue.

 The game was another scary, nail-biter at first, but as usual, our boys pulled through in the end and made us proud. The halftime show went off without a hitch and the UConn fans, as well as our own, responded warmly to the combined state outline and UConn logo on the field as the 700-or-so piece ensemble played “America the Beautiful.” After the game, we performed our pregame show; the UConn band doesn’t see many other visiting bands (neither do we, for that matter), and we were both thrilled to play for each other. Jason Bennet and I took a few pictures with UConn’s drum majors to remember the trip. Our bands shared the parking lot outside the stadium as we each loaded our buses; it was a mini bonding session for all of us! After we left I heard nothing but positive things about the trip, game, performance, and the UConn band. They were some of the nicest people you could meet!

 The trip home was long but after dinner I hopped on the bus and passed out until we reached the Coliseum parking (I can sleep anywhere!) at four the next morning.

 This trip was by far the most exciting, most educational, most amazingly unbelievable experience of my college career and none of it would have been possible without the WVU Foundation and the Pride Travel Fund. Our band is so thankful for all that has been done for us, and I can’t wait for my next adventure with The Pride of West Virginia.

            The band was to arrive at 10PM to the WVU Band Practice Field in order to load the nine buses that are required for our band to depart on a trip.  When I arrived at 9:30 to start my duties as drum major, many students had already arrived.  The excitement of those students was very high.  They, including myself, were very excited to go to New York City the following day.

            Many of the students in the band had previously been to NYC for various other trips and leisure activities.  However, many other students had never been there.  When we departed Morgantown, WV at around 11PM the countdown began.  “Only nine more ours will we are in New York City”, is only one of the comments that I heard from my particular bus. The farther and farther we got from Morgantown the noises began to dwindle as one by one, each student began to fall asleep.

We arrived in New York City earlier than expected.  Our agenda’s had us arriving in NYC at 8AM; however we arrived two hours in advance.  Being up at 6:30AM was not a problem on this day.  On most school days it is very hard for me to get up at 7:00am let alone 6:00am.  However, this day was different.  When we got off the bus everyone was looking to the skies.  The size of the buildings left many of the students in awe.  Many of the students came from small towns in West Virginia, and southern Pennsylvania, and they were in wonder of the size of the city. 

Everyone knows that you cannot see the entire city in one day.  Mr. Drury explained to us before we left to plan our day accordingly so that we were not traveling the entire time we were at the city.  My day consisted of getting off the bus and finding a Starbucks, going to the NBC show, strolling through Central Park, Visiting the Natural History Museum, going to Times Square, riding a subway to Canal St., which is commonly known as Chinatown.  From there we departed to the Macy’s and other shops surrounding it.

When the buses arrived at 8:00pm, everyone was exhausted.  Having walked around all day in a busy city we were ready for a comfortable bed.  The bus became very quite very quickly as we departed NYC and people quickly fell asleep.

When we arrived to Hartford, Connecticut to our hotel, people were waking up slowly and went straight to their rooms for a good eight our sleep that wasn’t on a bus.

            IT’S GAME DAY! As I strolled out of the hotel on Saturday morning in my travel band uniform, breakfast we being provided by the band staff.  Many people were still very tired, but they were very excited for it to be game day.

            As we arrived at the University of Connecticut’s stadium, we began by playing at the WVU Alumni Tent for our Alumni and Fans.  We proceeded to march to the Stadium.  We were greeted by both positive and negative cheers from the UCONN fans.   This is typical of any away trip, but surprisingly, the positives outweighed the negatives.  We entered the stadium and the game begun. 

            As the first half went on and UCONN took the lead in the game our hopes went down, but our support for our team lead on.  We played more and more to get our team to turn around this game.  We knew that they could do it because we watched them do it to the Auburn team the week before. 

            As halftime we were excited to perform.  As our first song, we played one of Latin tunes, Camino Real, and followed by West Virginia Hills to get our fans supportive again.  The last part of our portion of halftime was playing a song with the UCONN band.  Picture 700 student musicians all playing together as one group.  We made the outline of our state and the UCONN band spelled out ‘UCONN’ on the field over top of it.  It was a really cool being able to be a part of that. 

            After halftime, the second half of the football game turned around very nicely.  We went from losing to gaining a major lead in the game.  Before the ending of the game, we began to exit to the field to prepare for a postgame performance.  The team won and we marched we made our way to the field to start our postgame performance. 

            We started our performance with our traditional pregame show.  We then ended with one of our fiery Latin tunes, Malaguena.  After our performance we watched the University of Connecticut’s Marching Band perform one of their Halftime shows, and end with their version of Malaguena. 

            After the game, we departed home from a very exciting and memorable experience.  Being able to go to New York City, and being able to do a joint performance with the UCONN band, were just the major perks of this trip.  I am sure that everyone had a great time.