Performances
The band performs at every home football game and makes several local and national appearances throughout the year. When traveling the band requires ten charter buses, or equivalently two charter planes, to accommodate the band membership, faculty, and equipment needed for performances. "The Pride Travel Fund" was created before the 2008 season to help offset these costs. In the past decade alone the band has traveled to the states of Alabama, Arizona, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, North Carolina, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and the District of Columbia.
The band is sometimes referred to as an ambassador of the state of West Virginia, often being selected to represent the state at political events. The band was invited to the Inaugural Parades of Richard Nixon in 1969 and Ronald Reagan in 1985. In the fall of 2005 the band celebrated Constitution Day with a performance on the National Mall that was attended by the late Robert C Byrd, one of West Virginia's two representatives in the US Senate. In 2008 the band performed at the inauguration of West Virginia Governor Joe Manchin in Charleston.
The band has performed at many bowl games due to its close association to the Mountaineer football team. The band performed at WVU's first BCS Bowl Game, the 2006 Nokia Sugar Bowl, in Atlanta, Georgia. Significant national television coverage was provided for the band's pregame and halftime performances during the 2008 Tostitos Fiesta Bowl in Glendale, Arizona.
Read more about this topic: West Virginia University Mountaineer Marching Band
Famous quotes containing the word performances:
“This play holds the season’s record [for early closing], thus far, with a run of four evening performances and one matinee. By an odd coincidence it ran just five performances too many.”
—Dorothy Parker (1893–1967)
“At one of the later performances you asked why they called it a “miracle,”
Since nothing ever happened. That, of course, was the miracle
But you wanted to know why so much action took on so much life
And still managed to remain itself, aloof, smiling and courteous.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)