The University of Nebraska-Lincoln campus is reverberating with the Pride of Nebraska this week — Cornhusker Marching Band members new and old.
JoANNE YOUNG / Lincoln Journal Star | Posted: Monday, August 18, 2008 7:00 pm
They posted the roster Sunday night.
As if they weren’t stressed enough, it went up a half-hour late.
Alex Fall, an alto sax player from Lincoln North Star, was running on adrenaline at that point — artificially induced with Red Bull.
Kelsey Harris, a piccolo player from Lincoln East, had been among the 44 piccolo players who had passed the first round. The number was being narrowed to 33.
“I don’t think I’ve ever been that stressed out,” she said.
They’d been working, working, all weekend.
“I was so exhausted,” Harris said. “I just kept telling myself, ‘You can do this. You know you’re going to be there. You just have to work hard.’”
Newbies and veterans alike had to audition for a spot on the Cornhusker Marching Band, and the chance to stand and deliver on Tom Osborne Field at each Husker home game.
Those auditions had their tense moments.
Imagine, Fall said, 80 people marching in front of you. Then they start going that way, and you keep going this way. And suddenly, here’s a tuba coming at you.
While they waited for the announcement, Harris and her roommate ate “a whole bunch of Goldfish (crackers),” took showers, tried to calm down.
Harris and Fall count themselves among the 290 lucky ones.
Fall grew up in Lincoln, he said, “when the Huskers were a good football team.”
And here they were Tuesday, marching and playing in anticipation, the morning sun beating down.
“Play to what you see, not what you hear,” Doug Bush, UNL assistant director of bands, coached. “Set yourself up for success. Be thinking ahead.”
Fall chose the sax in fifth grade. He has listened over and over to an old CD of the marching band’s greatest hits.
“It’s a lot of fun to actually come down and play those songs. It gives you goose bumps.”
Reach JoAnne Young at 473-7228 or jyoung@journalstar.com.