FLUTES
2024 was absolutely, positively, FLOVELY for the Big Red Flutes! For the fifth year in a row, the section put on a Flalentine’s concert to raise money for charity – this year’s choice was the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence. In the fall, we had one of the largest classes of new members the section has ever seen, which has made for a super fun and exciting semester for us all! We had 20 (!!!) flutes march at Homecoming, and with so many high-scoring football games, we have done so many flute-ups that we have lost count. We had such an incredible year because of all of the dedicated members of our section who showed up to games and rehearsals and special events and we literally could not have asked for a better group of people to eat our little treats, play the koomcha game, and sing annoying songs with. It’s been so amazing to see our section grow and to see our new members come out of their shells! Thank you flutes for such a great year and for allowing us to be your section leaders through it all!
Flove Flalways and Florever,
Isabella “because i knew you…” Zahl
Ari “…i have been changed for good” Schor
CLARINETS
We can’t believe how fast this season went by! This fall, we had the joy of meeting a remarkable number of new members at auditions and First Night, and it’s been a blast getting to know them while sharing our traditions! Despite a rainy homecoming and some chilly home games, we created so many cherished memories traveling to Princeton, Brown, and Columbia for away games. Marching at Sy Katz was a highlight, especially seeing so many of our members experience the parade for the first time! It was also fantastic to reconnect with many of our outstanding alumni at homecoming, away games, and the Sy Katz parade.
Beyond the football field, we carried on beloved traditions and started new ones—baking pies, making pudding bags, bingeing Lord of the Rings, and creating memories with other sections. A huge thank you to our seniors, who have been part of the Nets since 2021, and a warm welcome to the new members who will continue to make us proud for years. We are thrilled to have led this incredible group of people through an unforgettable season.
For the glory of the pack,
The Nets
SAXES
The Big Red Saxes had another fantastic year!
We had nine new members join in 2024, and they have all been extremely dedicated to the band! We continued our saxy traditions, while forming new memories by losing our voices from parading and new sax cheers (we added the HOT-TO-GO!, a now fan favorite). From practices to home games, we created new, but continued traditions within our three ranks: #, $, and JL. Forming new hand movements to having minty cocoa to playing sax tag, we were never not doing anything! Having traveled to Brown, Princeton, and Columbia, the sax section has seen attendance rise to heights not seen since before the pandemic! Heck, we can’t even make a full sax pyramid, but we still tried countless times! At Sy Katz, we paraded around New York City with our shiny new sax hats with fancy new rank buttons! As we close out a fantastic year, we want to recognize all of our new members for their dedication and continued spirit. Meanwhile, we also want to recognize our amazing current members for being inclusive and welcoming!
To more saxy shenanigans,
Mike & Vivian
TRUMPETS
What’s up old folks! We are so excited to share with you an update on yet another remarkable year for the Big Red Trumpets — which I am sure you have all been eagerly anticipating. This year, the Trumpets have welcomed an incredible group of new faces who have enriched the section with their high spirits, unforgettable kindness, and passion to create beautiful music. We are very lucky to have them! And with them, the Trumpets have been able to continue sharing their unwavering positive energy, exuberance, and undying love for the band and Cornell not only far above Cayuga’s waters but also far beyond the reaches of Ithaca, all across the Northeast! Whether we’re moosing Drum Major Pauws in the middle of Welcome to the Black Parade, shaking hands during Dr. Worm at the Sy Katz Parade, or even going on adventures during Pep Band away trips, we have shown that the traditions of the Big Red Trumpets and the excitement that comes with being a Big Red Trumpet is everlasting! Oh, and Trumpet bus culture, filled with playful songs and friendly games, is strong and better than ever! This past year also marked a moment of learning as Trumpet 101 sectionals offered the opportunity for beginners to explore the Trumpet and improve their playing skills. Overall, the section is alive and well and no matter what, we will continue moosing, footballing, crumpetting, push-upping, playing loud and high, and most importantly, we will continue being a supportive community for one another! We are thankful for all of the support that we’ve gotten from Alumni and are always excited to see your faces.
HORNS
The Horns had a fantastic season this year! We were thrilled to welcome a new member to our section and she has contributed so many happy vibes to our ever-growing 8-mile wide section. This season was jam packed with amazing memories, from winning our first homecoming game in 8 years to winning our first homecoming game in 8 years and to winning our first homecoming game in 8 years! It was great to see our retention and all the other sections that were eager to try marching horn. This year we continued to fuel our fun little traditions and even added some extra repertoire to our parading routine! We’ve made sure to continue things like Jractice (Shoutout Olive for the JLasses), chicken wings, pickling, buying ducks (we were low in stock though), Hornsgiving, and ultimately having the bestest of the best parading routine. It was so great to see so many alumni at each game; we all have truly missed you guys. This season has been nothing but a blast, and it truly flew by way too quickly. With absolute bangers like Call Me Al to soft, emosh songs like Home, we’ve been constantly showered with compliments about our sound. This year, we also had the honor of marching in the Sy Katz parade. It was a bittersweet moment, but it was without a doubt the performance to cap off our season. To our 3 seniors, Ryan, Owen, and Nathaniel, we will miss you all dearly, and we will carry on the laughter and love you have all brought to our section (#mushroom pizza). Thank you to all the alumni for your continued support, and we hope to make you proud as we carry on the traditions and spirit of this incredible section. GO H* AND HLOVE
<3
TROMBONES
2024 was a great year for the Bones! We welcomed an amazing class of new young Bone and Tone players and taught them our loud and proud ways. Our ranks were packed, with as many as 8 marchers in each by the end of the season. Pep attendance is also way up! A full row of Bones in Lynah blasting in the ears of the trumpets a row in front of us is always a great sight. On top of all that, we got to do suicides at a whopping 4 shows this year, including at Homecoming! Somehow, we managed to get through all of them with no casualties or injuries. Bone cheers are sounding great, and we even managed to get a sectional together to practice them! This year included super fun trips to Brown, Princeton, and Columbia. The Happy Bus song has never sounded better and the Tetris featured some elite levels of packing. Other highlights from this semester include a first place scavenger hunt victory, extreme bone piling, and a mysterious visit from the Unknown Bone. We ended the season strong with plenty of bare feet in Schoellkopf for a spirited Hawaii 5-0, followed by our signature Thanksgiving feast in the stands. We’re also excited to have brought back Bone Brunch on North and Bone Baking on West this semester. We had so much fun this year and are looking forward to a fantastic spring semester and 2025 season!
TUBAS
The Tubas had an unforgettable year filled with music, laughter, and plenty of spirit! We were thrilled to welcome a talented group of new members, some of whom brought skills on other instruments, adding even more versatility and energy to our section. At rehearsals, we embraced the chaos, playing as loudly as possible and experimenting with creating our own Tuba dance moves. On Halloween, we delivered a bone-rattling performance, with ELEVEN tubae blasting 13 times in front of the clock tower before delighting an enthusiastic crowd with classics like In the Hall of the Mountain King and Sonic Boom. Despite the rainy games, our spirit never wavered—we danced in the puddles, blocked traffic with joy, and kept the most dedicated fans entertained with our favorite tunes. We can’t wait to see what next year has in store for us!
DRUMLINE
We know what you’re thinking. WOMEN???? In MY drumline leadership?!?!? Well, let it be known that this year, the year of 10/24 for a whole month, the drumline coincidentally fell into the hands of all-women captains & subsection leaders, and we are THRIVING (with a feminine touch!) We welcomed a HUGE group of 16 new members, with experience ranging from ‘never marched before’ to ‘Texas High School Marching Band’. Some highlights from our frolics this year: taking over Goldwin Smith Hall on a Saturday night for a Nerf gun fight, running it back at the Stoughton Farm corn maze (and for some of us, getting lost in the corn for upwards of an hour), and (a recent development) playing with our brand new BOOMWHACKERS! This season, we visited Brown, Princeton, & Columbia, and had Harvard visit us so we could bond with our favorite drumlines across the Ivy League! We continued the Sy Katz tradition in NYC and actually got to march in the road this time! Also a notable mention: winning our homecoming game for the first time in seven years! Overall, we’re in an awesome spot: a group of excited members and immaculate vibes all around. We’ve had an awesome time ‘bringing back the old’: putting retired cheers in our folders and retired traditions in our lives, but also ‘making room for the new’ by letting new members incorporate their own music/ideas! Our newbies are truly so incredible and inspired, and although the year of the Big Red Femline may have come to its end, we are so proud of the spot we’re in, and can’t wait to see where the youngsters will take us in the future 
GUARD
This season was another great one for the Big Red Color Guard! With the exception of homecoming we had glovely weather which allowed us to bring our moves to the next level. In many ways this was literal because we started tossing parallels in shows (shout out Uprising). We also–as promised–brought back rifle in Show 4! This was a great experience and we hope to do the same next season. The rest of the routines this year were amazing as well. We managed to add new moves to the repertoire, we lovingly refer to these as Ola 1, Ola 2 and Ola 3, in honor of our 2024 Captain. In other news, we doubled the size of the guard through brainwashing (jk everyone is realizing how awesome we are. Better late than never:)). This year’s Showcomm had us front and center, so the band finally can understand who the real stars are (thank you 2024 Showcomm!!). Much to our delight we were also FINALLY able to perform Dr. Worm in its entirety thanks to our wonderful 2024 DM, Pauws (we will miss you so much). Outside of guard, half of guard has been learning to play the flute (beating the non-musical allegations one B-flat at a time. That is definitely not the only note we can play). Outside of Fischell, our guard snacks have been extremely tasty this year, ranging from baklava to crepes, so if you would like a piece, feel free to attend our games. Anyone is welcome in the Guard
Join us for the following events this fall!
Saturday, 9/14, 12:00 pm: CU Downtown @ Ithaca Commons
Saturday, 9/28, 11:00 am: Alumni Luncheon @ Fischell Band Center.
RSVP through this form.
Saturday, 9/28, 2:00 pm: HOMECOMING Big Red vs. Yale (Home)
Saturday, 10/5, 1:00 pm: Big Red vs. Albany (Home)
Friday, 10/11, 6:00 pm: Big Red vs. Harvard (Home)
Saturday, 10/26, 12:00 pm: Big Red @ Brown (Away)
Saturday, 11/2, 1:00 pm: Big Red @ Princeton (Away)
Saturday, 11/9, 1:00 pm: Big Red vs. Penn (Home)
Saturday, 11/16, 1:00 pm: Big Red vs. Dartmouth (Home)
Saturday, 11/23, 12:00 pm: Big Red @ Columbia (Away)
Saturday, 11/23. ~6:00 pm: Sy Katz ’31 Parade
The Big Red Bands are excited to welcome you back to campus for reunion, June 6-9!
Join us for our annual reunion luncheon on June 8 from 11:30 AM – 1:00 PM at the Fischell Band Center. Let us know if you plan to attend by filling out the reunion form.
We also encourage you to stop by to see the band perform at the following events:
*Diversity Alumni Programs Dinner – Friday, June 7 @ 6:45 PM in the Physical Sciences Building
*Fun in the Sun – Saturday, June 8 @ 3:15 PM on the Arts Quad
*Class of 1999 Dinner Reception – Saturday, June 8 @ 6:15 PM on the Ag Quad
*Cornelliana Night – Saturday, June 8 @ 8:30 PM and 10:15 PM on Bailey Hall Plaza
If you’re interested in playing with the band, fill out the reunion form so undergrad leaders can prepare music and instruments.
We look forward to seeing you!Hey Alumni!
Hello! My name is Erin! I’m a senior flute that actually goes to Ithaca College, not Cornell (whoops). I’m majoring in religious studies with a minor in anthropology. In 2023 I served on bandstaph as one of the flute section leaders along with Izzy Cowan! And in 2022 I was a fundraising chair, I put out the first couple batches of the uniform pillows! I won’t graduate until December 2024, so this year I’m serving as an alumni chair, as well as helping with librarian and historian duties, I like to be kept busy!
Hi, I’m Duck, and I’m a junior trumpet. I’m part of the long lineage of trumpets who are also electrical and computer engineers, including KP ‘06 and Buddy Holly ‘14. I’ve just finished up my 2023 terms as the secretary of the Pep Band and the trumpet SpinMaster. This year, in addition to alumni relations, I will be one of the librarians for the Pep Band.
My name is Kelly, but I also go by Komet, and I’m a sophomore studying physics and computer science in Arts and Sciences. I’m a trumpet and horn player and have served as last year’s pep treasurer, equipment chair, and webmaster, and this year I’m also serving as a historian.
Hello, I’m Dina, and I’m a freshman tuba player and an occasional horn player. I’m studying electrical and computer engineering. Along with Alumni Relations, I will be a field manager this year and a historian and fundraising chair for the Pep Band. I’m really looking forward to this year.
We are all so excited to be your 2024 Alumni Relations chairs! Stay tuned for upcoming announcements about our Giving Day livestream and other spring performances!
Feel free to reach out to us at ebaum@ithaca.edu, rdh247@cornell.edu, kfl35@cornell.edu, and dn333@cornell.edu! We look forward to (hopefully) meeting you at Reunion and Homecoming this year!
Peace and aardvarks,
Erin Baum ‘24
Bobby “Duck” Haig ‘25
Kelly “Komet” Leiby ‘26
Dina Nabavian ‘27
And now…presenting the only REAL Band Notes in the Ivy League!
Notes from the Ladder: Reintroducing Your 2024 Drum Major!
Notes from the Office: Introducing Your 2024 Head Manager!
Introducing Your 2024 Pep Band Manager!
Introducing Your 2024 Pep Band Conductors!
HEY ALUMNI!
I’m so excited to be writing to you as your 2024 Drum Major! Just in case you forgot, my name is Nina, but most people in the band know me as Pauws (pronounced like a “pause” button). I’m a junior in the College of Arts and Sciences from Sturbridge, Massachusetts. I’m planning to major in Psychology with minors in English and Performing and Media Arts (with a concentration in theater). My post-graduation plans still haven’t changed: I’ll be applying to law schools, focusing on family law. Hopefully, they let me in (fingers crossed)!
In the BRMB, I’ve spent a lot of time behind the scenes. As a past Drum Major and Show Committee Chair, I’ve loved getting to see how rehearsals have an impact on each member. Outside of the BRMB, I play my trumpet (and sometimes cymbals) in the Big Red Pep Band. This is also my first year on cymbals in the Cornell University Indoor Drumline.
Through a LOT of trial and error, I learned a lot about myself as a leader and the band itself. With a new understanding of what works and what doesn’t, I have a couple of goals for the upcoming year. I want to continue to bring our sound to old songs, and hopefully keep salvaging lost traditions. I plan on bringing these into spring music rehearsals. If you tune into Giving Day, you might hear a couple! I want to work new show music into those rehearsals, too. Our Show Committee Chairs are extremely prepared and full of ideas, so I’m excited to see how they’re mirrored in our shows.
We’re in a new post-COVID-shutdown era of the band, which opens up a lot of opportunities to set precedents. I want to help Section Leaders and Show Committee members feel confident in their abilities, especially when teaching the ropes to future generations. We’re already hitting the ground running; I held a forum with Section Leaders to talk about expectations, worries, excitements, and future plans. They had a lot of questions and want to do right by their members. They’re so positive and accommodating! I’m VERY excited to work with them this year.
On the topic of leadership, I’m looking forward to seeing the band grow again in this new era. The current freshman class is huge and seeks out opportunities for leadership. The new members we’ll meet in the fall have incredible role models to help them navigate Cornell. I’m also beyond ecstatic to be working with this year’s Head Manager, Emily Jones. She is such a dedicated, hard-working, kind person, and I know she’s going to do incredibly well.
This season is going to be eventful, energetic, collaborative and (hopefully) productive. I can’t wait to share our sound with you all. I’ll see you all at Reunion, Homecoming, Sy Katz, and more!
Nina “Pauws” Ellison ‘25
Hi Alumni!
My name is Emily Jones, and I am so excited to be the 2024 Head Manager! I am a member of the clarinet section, and last year, I was one of the clarinet section leaders. I am from Buffalo, NY, and I am a junior majoring in Biological Sciences in CALS with a concentration in microbiology. I also have two minors, one in Infectious Disease and one in Education. Outside of band, I am a member of the Whittaker lab at the Vet School, where I study Feline Coronavirus.
This year, I have a lot of ideas that I hope to put into action. One of my goals is to further define the role of our Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Chairs so that way next year there is a smooth transition and expectations already outlined. Some of the things in the works are workshops for Bandstaph and other community-building events. In addition, in collaboration with our pub chairs, there have already been several social media posts for Black History Month and Lunar New Year. We hope to keep this going throughout the year by having many different heritage months featured. Our philanthropy coordinators have also been hard at work organizing different events for the band, such as a day at the Ithaca Sciencenter for children to see different instruments and how they sound.
In the fall, I want to continue having personal events with our Drum Major Pauws, such as HM/DM breakfast. New member retention was incredible last year, and I want that to be the case again this year. Speaking of Pauws, I am so excited to get to work with her this year! She did an amazing job last year, and I can’t wait to see all that she accomplishes this year.
As for the marching season, I am so excited for the band to go to Brown, Princeton, and Columbia. Our upperclassmen are really looking forward to doing the Sy Katz Parade again, and our new members cannot wait to be a part of it this year. We hope to see you all there!
I cannot wait for marching season to start again, and I am looking forward to a really great year!
Emily “EJ” Jones ‘25
Hey Alumni!
My name is David “Dubs” Kaprielian, and I’m your 2024 Pep Band Manager! I’m a junior trumpet player hailing from Mahopac, New York, and I’m majoring in Mechanical Engineering with a minor in Archaeology! I was Pep Conductor last year, and now I’m looking to help the band out behind the scenes!
Entering this year, the Pep Band is in a fantastic place. Recruitment was immense this year, and we have quite a few freshmen already at the 100-point mark! Almost every hockey game has been filled to the brim, and we’ve even been able to split the band during away trips! I’m excited to keep the good vibes going over the course of this year.
Our schedule this year has been jam-packed so far, especially with away trips. As of me writing this, we’ve played at Harvard, Dartmouth, RPI, and Union, with the NorthCountry trip coming up this weekend! It’s been super awesome getting to play in all sorts of different rinks, and exploring the cities around them. Looking ahead, potential playoff games for both Hockey and Basketball look to add a lot more mileage, the ball keeps rolling!
At home, we’ve had our foot on the gas since before the start of classes! Both the MHockey and WHockey teams have been doing a whole lotta winning with us in attendance, allowing them both to clinch the Ivy Championship! The band sounds fantastic, and nothing is better than blasting España or Through the Fire and Flames in a packed Lynah environment.
We’ve gone to a number of other sports too! Some of my favorites this year were us going to the Club MHockey and WHockey teams’ Senior Games! They really appreciated us being there, and it was a super fun time. We also have been at some Men’s Basketball games, as they surge to the top of the Ivy League, and to Wrestling as they took down #2 Missouri! We’re also looking forward to the onset of Lacrosse Season, and many specialized Davy’s to come.
I’m super excited to get the pep band to as many games as possible, holding strong our traditions, and keeping us sounding spectacular. For all y’all alumni, feel free to stop by and say hi! We’d all love to see ya.
Here’s to another awesome year of Pep!
David “Dubs” Kaprielian ‘25
Hey everybody!
We are Catherine and Slice and we’re your Spring 2024 Pep Band conductors! The semester has gotten off to an exciting start with the continuing Men’s Hockey season, securing a win with Princeton 6-2 and an OT win with Quinnipiac in our first weekend of events. Our band shipped “up” to Boston for our INCREDIBLE WIN against Hahvahd in a 2-0 shutout!! We got to collaborate with many other bands at home in Lynah and also away at other rinks like Brown, Dartmouth, and RPI for some megaband shenanigans. After a tense shootout win against Yale, we also became Ivy Champions! We’re hoping to continue this momentum at our upcoming trip to Clarkson / SLU and (fingers crossed) post-season hockey fun!
This semester we’ve also been at a lot of Women’s Hockey games to support their incredible season as Ivy League champs (first time in 4 years)! They’ve been having a fantastic year and it’s been an honor to be able to play at their games this semester. As for other events, we’ve performed at Men’s Basketball, Wrestling, and both senior games for Men’s and Women’s Club Hockey and we’re excited to continue attending these events, especially with Lacrosse season starting up and Ivy Madness on the horizon.
It’s been great to see everyone at rehearsals and to continue working as a trio with Dubs this semester, and we look forward to keeping up this energy at upcoming events! We love seeing all the olds both at Lynah and away rinks keeping the Big Red spirit alive. Hoping to have a great rest of the semester with lots of wins all over and even more of a blast playing some sensational songs with everyone!
Peace and Ivy Champions all around,
Catherine “Ian Shane enthusiast, californians stick together” Frank ’26
Slice “floppy armed Zoot Suit Riot devotee” Scialabba ’25
Hey Alumni!
As we come to the close of another successful season of the Big Red Bands, we are excited to share some of our best experiences with you. We’ve brought our Big Red spirit to games in New Haven, Philadelphia, and Cambridge as well as Ithaca. We loved having you at events like the alumni reunion, Homecoming luncheon, and all of our performances! We couldn’t do all that we do without our alumni!
We’ve had a wonderful time serving as your 2023 Alumni Relations chairs, and can’t wait to see what next year’s Alumni Relations chairs will do as we pass on our roles.
Peace and aardvarks,
Claudia “Crash” Slivovsky ‘25 and Sterling “Limbo” Chargois ‘26
And now presenting…the only REAL Band Notes in the Ivy League!
Hello Alumni,
It has been a pleasure serving as the band’s 2023 Head Manager. While this past year has been a challenging one, it has definitely been extremely rewarding and I could not have asked for a better term.
There were a lot of changes introduced in the start of our term, such as a new Operational Lead, a new Drum Major advisor, and working with a new Majorette team that was formed this year. While these changes were overwhelming at first, they worked out very well for the band. Through the year, these relationships have become more defined, and I hope they can continue to be positive ones going into 2024. As many of you saw during Homecoming, we gave a fantastic performance with the Majorette dance team. It has been such an honor to be a part of Cornell history bringing in a dance group with such significance in black culture.
My goals at the beginning of the year were to further define the role of the Diversity Chair, promote retention, and ensure that trips to Yale and Harvard were able to continue post-Covid. All of these goals were met throughout the year. We shifted the Diversity Chair position to a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee. While getting the position off the ground was hard, plans for the benefit of future generations were eventually put into place. Some things that our DEI Committee worked on was maintaining a list of events from different diverse organizations happening on Cornell’s campus for the band to attend, providing education on social media during important history months, and working with pub chairs to promote other important events.
Having great new member retention was a huge goal going into the fall semester. High retention indicates that new members feel there is a community in band and want to come back every day to continue to be a part of it. Another key part of retention is that members feel safe in band, which is extremely important to me. Band was the first community I found at Cornell, and I wanted to ensure that new members could feel the magic I still feel to this day. Our retention this year has been phenomenal. Most of the new members that joined at the beginning of the semester are still active, which is a sign that we as leaders were able to do our job well this year.
My last goal was to ensure trips like Yale and Harvard (which haven’t happened since 2019) were able to happen. Thankfully, we were able to travel to both this year. Even though the performance at Herald Square could not happen, we were still able to connect with our alumni in the New Haven area during the Yale game and our post- game concert. Two weeks later, we traveled to Harvard and performed at Faneuil Hall. During this trip, we were able to cheer on Cornell at the game, explore Boston, and perform for our families and alumni in the Boston area. We also traveled to Penn in early November. In previous years, we’ve run across issues with Penn, but this year due to our work and previous Head Managers’ work, we were able to avoid all issues that have occurred in past years. Overall, all of our trips were successful and we had a ton of fun traveling to other Ivy League Universities and seeing everyone there.
Aside from football games, we were able to continue enjoying on-campus/local performances such as Dragon Day, Spring Concert, Cornell Days, Senior & New Student Convocations, Reunion, Special Rehearsal, and many more. The band also enjoyed giving back to the community with philanthropy events like the instrument exhibit at the Ithaca ScienCenter and assisting with tree planting at the Botanical Gardens.
Looking back on the past year, I am so happy I was given the opportunity to serve as the 2023 Head Manger and I am proud of all that has happened this year. None of this, though, would be possible without the constant support and hard work of Pauws and Bandstaph. Also, I’d like to thank Slice for his work leading the Pep Band in an amazing year. Lastly, nothing would be possible without the huge support of our alumni base, so thank you as well.
I look forward to seeing what future band leaders do and I am excited to see our organization that we all love keep growing. Thank you for an incredible year.
Beyan Kesselly ‘24
Hey Alumni (again)!
It’s your favorite trombone-playing pep band manager, Slice, here with some updates about the past nine months:
After a slow start, the hockey season really began to heat up. We bested Yale and Brown on the road, before sweeping Clarkson at home and heading over to Lake Placid. While we lost to our Massachusetts rivals there, we pulled of a miraculous shutout upset of the #1 seed Denver before finally ending our season against BU. With five hockey trips (and a split band being sent to Ivy Madness at Princeton for good measure), it was certainly one of the most thrilling seasons yet, and our members had a blast! The spring pep band was a really tight-knit group that really bonded over a difficult season. While dealing with Cornell funding and planning a trip to Manchester with 3-days notice hasn’t been ideal, seeing the reminiscing and smiles from all the band members makes the work worth it.
Things cooled down during the bring, as lacrosse had a somewhat middling performance. That’s not to say the pep band was struggling though. With the help of our social chairs, we were really able to build a pep band community. Our movie afternoons, bowling nights, and red / white crumpet events were all super well attended and gave people a place to relax after a difficult semester. We also finally started fundraising again, making a substantial profit on our stickers and selling quite a few pep shirts.
One of the major concerns at the start of the season was recruitment. We lost a ton of passionate seniors in the spring, and I was worried about the strength of the pep band. Amazingly though, we not only replaced our seniors, but we grew in size by over 20 members! This freshman class has been one of the most dedicated groups I’ve seen in the pep band. It’s exciting seeing competitive races for pep events – we had almost 100 signups for Harvard hockey – and a filled pep room during rehearsals. The incoming class has both embraced the traditions of old and made their own identities, and I’m excited to see how they grow in the coming years.
This fall, we had a slow start with the marching season, but embraced our goal of attending a varied selection of sports with frequent visits to women’s soccer and field hockey events. Of course, the hockey season has begun with a bang, with us being the last undefeated team in NCAA hockey. After a rough stretch, we just upset #5 Boston University at MSG in one of the most intense games of the season.
As we prepare for the final small trip of the season to Colgate, I could not be prouder of where the pep band is at. We’re bigger and better than we have been in years, and I’m super excited to see where we can go from here. Being pep manager has been a dream come true, and I can’t wait to see what happens next as I wave my arms from below (hopefully in time)!
Thank you all for an amazing season, and hope to see you back soon!
Max “Slice” Scialabba, ’25
Hi everybody!
We’re Dubs and Catherine, and we’re the Pep Band’s Fall 2023 conductors! It’s been a pleasure to work with the band throughout the semester to sound even bigger and even better while engaging in silly shenanigans. We’ve won all the home games we’ve played for Hockey (except the one from Cambridge that we don’t mention), including the tense Dartmouth 2-2 shootout win, double victory against Minnesota Duluth, and 6-1 victory against Toronto Metropolitan. Our first away trip of the semester was to MSG for Red Hot Hockey, where we played and emerged victorious against BU in a 2-1 win! As of writing this, we have yet to take on Colgate for a nice two-game weekend to wrap up the semester. We also played for a few women’s soccer, field hockey, sprint football, men’s basketball, and women’s hockey games, the latter of which has had an INCREDIBLE season!
We’ve had such a fun semester that flew by so quickly! It’s been great to see rehearsals so full of people looking for a fun place to play some fabulous and funky tunes. Looking forward to a great spring semester for even more wins and excitement!
Peace and happy holidays!
Dubs “Ian Shane is my literal father” Kaprielian
Catherine “shake your silly string cans” Frank
