About 30 minutes before the game starts, we move all of our instruments, stands, and percussion equipment into the gym. We’ll play for about 10 minutes during the pregame warmups and then play the national anthem right before the game starts.

During the game, we play songs during timeouts and in between quarters but, how do we decide what songs to play at what time? Well, it depends on how long the song is. Coaches are allowed to call either a 30 second or 1 minute timeout, so the band has to be ready for both. Kevin Jacobs, who is in charge of directing the band at basketball games, writes down two songs that we could play during the next timeout on a whiteboard (one short and one long) and he shows it to the band so everyone is prepared for what to play next. 

We play the fight song as soon as the buzzer sounds for both halftime and the end of the game. We then wrap things up by playing Fountains of Wayne’s 2003 hit “Stacy’s Mom”, a tradition that was started by Blake Kuriowa, who directs the marching band and pit orchestra at Mountainside and occasionally directs basketball games. Once that’s finished, it’s time to pack up. For me and the rest of the percussion section, that means making multiple trips between the gym and the band room while carrying different parts of the drumset and any of the auxiliary percussion and putting them away while the wind players are putting away their music stands and instruments.

Basketball band is a very fun activity to participate in and now I hope you have a better understanding of what basketball games are like for the Mountainside band. 

“I think basketball band is a great opportunity for kids in band to let loose a little bit, you know, take things up an octave, play an extra bit louder, play some music we don’t usually get to play in band class.” – Jeremy Zander, band director.