Recap: Band Camp!

Happy first day of classes! 

After a long week in the sun, our MVs are ready to dive into their coursework – some for the very first time in college. While they settle into their classrooms and wait to come back for practice this evening, we’ll review the some highlights from the past week – band camp!

Photo courtesy of Daniel Gaete

Every day brought something unique to band camp this year. It was a wildly productive and successful week! We put nearly two full shows on the field (two weeks before our first game!), distributed uniforms through a carefully curated algorithm and the help of many hands, made new friends and so much more. 

Monday - Friday

Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday saw our MVs reuniting, getting to know one another and starting to get our feet under us. We worked on fundamentals, drill for our first show – which is September 7th against Marshall University –, music new and old and so much more.

On Thursday, we started setting drill for our pregame show! This year, pregame will be the Boston College game – keep an eye out for our performance! Some of us have been marching the same dot for years, and some of us were brand new to the show. Everyone did great! We also practiced stand tunes. 

Thursday morning also saw our annual band camp DRILL DOWN. This intense event is a Simon-Says style marching competition. Our winner this year was Nik Stapleton!

Photo courtesy of Atlas Vernier

With Friday morning off for required meetings for our first-year meetings, returners slept in before we all reconvened at the MVC in the afternoon. For both afternoon and evening session this day, we worked on setting and cleaning shows.

Saturday

After a standard morning session, the MVs spent the afternoon in Lane Stadium, practicing some different arrangements in the stands and putting our shows to real grass. On the way there, we had our first March to Victory of the season! This was especially exciting for new members. 

In the evening, we hosted our livestreamed Meet the Band concert. The band got to watch the color guard perform, and then the drumline. Their performances were great! We wish we had more opportunities to watch their hard work, and are so grateful for everything they do on and off the field. Once they finished, the band performed drill from the two shows we’ve set and performed some spirit spots and stand tunes in concert arcs as well. 

Photo courtesy of Atlas Vernier

Saturday ended with great excitement and equally great solemnity. Before the livestream, our retired director Dave McKee came to the MVC to give a speech about the importance of this 50th anniversary season and to share information about long-standing band traditions and how this program has the potential to shape lives. After the livestream, we performed our traditional Superman ritual (I’ll save the details – we want future marchers to experience the joy in person!), and we dismissed for the evening. 

Sunday

The band got to sleep in late on the last day before classes, with an afternoon call time of 3:30. After a short rehearsal, we performed our second March to Victory of the season and made our way to Lane Stadium for the annual Hokie Hi Spirit Rally. 

At the Spirit Rally, formerly known as the Hokie Hi Picnic, we performed a number of pieces from our gameday repertoire to assist dance and cheer in their efforts to teach the Class of 2028 what to do at a game. Lively despite the heat, the band had a great time calling out different variations on the “LET’S - GO - HOK - IES” signs carried on the field. 

After we played, leadership, first-year members and some helpful returners filed onto the field to form the big VT outline for the annual freshman picture. We hope they remember to pick up a copy to take home!

All in all, band camp was a great success. We have our left feet forward and are ready to get started!

Recap: Leadership Retreat!

It’s Tuesday evening and soon everyone will be arriving at the Marching Virginians Center for the third full day of band camp. 

While the rookies and returners are rolling in fresh off of months away, our 2024-2025 leadership have been hard at work since Friday in-person and long before behind-the-scenes. Let’s get some insight into the process and see what they’ve been up to!

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Friday

Friday for the MV Leadership was our work day! This meant different things for everyone.

For SSAs, drum majors, the head manager and the presidents or representatives of Kappa Kappa Psi and Tau Beta Sigma, this meant individual meetings with Polly and Chad. Officers took care of tasks specific to their positions. Field leadership largely attended to chores to help prepare the MVC for the year, and officers helped out where they could. These jobs included organizing equipment, reorganizing both rooms at the MVC and the office, cleaning the MVC and so many more essential tasks for a smooth-running band camp!

In the evening, we completed registration and then proceeded into a leadership session with Paige, Thomas and Emily – our executive officer and drum majors, respectively. Here, we set goals and spent time bonding in preparation for meeting all of our new and returning members later in the weekend.

Saturday

On Saturday, our MV Leadership met in the morning to discuss important topics like our schedule for the year and the special events that go on at each game. Later on, we met with Marching Virginian alumni Ben Nelson for a leadership training centered around respect, inclusion and what it means to be a leader.

In the evening, field leadership met to dust off their marching and instructional skills. The excitement for hitting the ground running is building!

Sunday

On the final day of leadership retreat, our field leadership had the special opportunity to perform at a funeral for a dedicated fan of Virginia Tech football and the Marching Virginians. This event was a great way to remind us as band camp starts how much we mean to our fans and how strong the impact is that we have on our Hokie community. 

Sunday also included more prep tasks for before band camp, like uniform organization and printing music. Our new winds registered in the early evening, and as they met their sections and had their first general meeting and fundamentals session, our returners came back to register as well.

We are so excited to get to know everyone in the band this year, and can’t wait to see what this awesome season has in store!

Between Band Practices: Emelia Delaporte

For the fifth blog in this series, Marketing and Communications Officer Emelia Delaporte reflects on her time at Virginia Tech, her involvement in student organizations, and what it means to be a Marching Virginian.  

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Photo courtesy of Emelia Delaporte

How long have you been in the MVs and what is your role? 

This will be my fourth season with the MVs, as well as my fourth year as an undergraduate. My role during this past season has been the Marketing and Communications Officer, and I will be reprising that this season. In addition to that, I have been a member of the piccolo section my entire time here. 

What’s your degree program and how far along in it are you? I have been pursuing dual degrees, so that means instead of doing a double major, it's so many credits that they hand you two separate diplomas. I'm pursuing professional and technical writing, which is a major under the English department, and multimedia journalism, which falls under the School of Communication. In addition to those two programs, I've also been pursuing double minors in natural resources recreation and biodiversity conservation, both of which are housed in the College of Natural Resources and Environment.  

Photo courtesy of Emelia Delaporte

What extracurriculars outside of the MVs did you engage in? 

I started out freshman year with the Wildlife Society, the Bird Club, the National Deer Association, the Outdoor Club, the Collegiate Times, and Silhouette Literary and Art Magazine. I did Panhellenic for a semester and a summer. I've tried to narrow it down a bit since then. My sophomore year, I became an assistant section editor for the Lifestyles column the Collegiate Times — that was my main organizational focus outside of the MVs.  My junior year, I ended up becoming the social media chair for the National Deer Association, lifestyles section editor for The Collegiate Times, and editor-in-chief of the Silhouette. This coming year, I'll be involved with the CT, the Silhouette, the Wildlife Society, the Bird Club, and WUVT, which is our student radio station. I also have done a lot of volunteer student research. 

Photo courtesy of Emelia Delaporte (handled with permits)

Earlier, you mentioned student research. What have you been investigating? 

Since my freshman year, I've been involved with the Wildlife Habitat and Population analysis lab, fondly known as WHAPA. With them, I've been doing camera trapping data entry since my freshman year, going through a bunch of pictures from cameras in Belize and helping folks identify jaguars and stuff like that. I was also briefly involved with a number of other projects, some of them centering around salamanders, birds, and trees. And then this past year, I've been involved with the Dayer Human Dimensions Lab. So in the spring, I was working on a shorebird disturbance project, and that's who I'm working with this summer. I'll also be working with them again in the fall. 

How would you say the MVs impacted your time at Virginia Tech? 

The MVs have always been something that was super special to me. The MVs gave me my friends for at least my freshman fall before I really got my legs under myself and was able to start branching out a little bit more into the university, and then they've been a home space to come back to every fall. It's definitely been my greatest social foundation while I've been in college. 

How would you say being in another organization outside of the MVs has benefited you? 

It’s taught me a lot about prioritization. There have been a lot of things that I would have loved to have done, but I've had to be a practice instead, like my involvement with Scouts BSA and the Order of the Arrow has kind of taken a backseat for the past couple of years because I've needed to be at practice. It's instilled more confidence in me that those organizations still want to be there for me when I have the time to be a part of them. It can be really gratifying to have to split your time between things like that, because it teaches you that those folks who you aren't able to be there with all the time actually care about you enough to say that, you're taking time away and that it’s okay. So it's taught me a lot about that, and just in general, it's given me a lot of time management skills.  

Photo courtesy of Emelia Delaporte

What advice do you have for folks who are new to the MVs? 

Don't feel left out because you're doing one thing when there's something else you could be doing. I remember my freshman year, I was so focused on, “oh my gosh, I can't be with my residence hall right now, like these people are all going to make friends, and I'm at practice. What am I going to do?” I ended up not being friends with them anyways, and that was probably for the better. So do the best you can to branch out and meet new people, but also recognize that if you can't be somewhere, it's not the end of the world. We all get busy.  Setting yourself up in the fall with other clubs and things to keep yourself busy when the spring comes has been really essential, at least for my well-being and my organization during the school year.

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Emelia is from Tampa, Florida and worked this summer as a social science research assistant.

Between Band Practices: Lauren Powell

For the fourth blog in this series, color guard rank captain Lauren Powell talks about balancing clubs, Greek, Disney and engineering with the Marching Virginians.

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How long have you been in the MVs and what is your role?

This will be my third season, I joined my freshman year in 2021, and I’m a rank captain in the color guard.

Photo courtesy of Lauren Powell

What’s your degree program and how far along in it are you?

I just switched to biomedical engineering, so technically this is my fourth year but I’m junior standing with taking a semester off for the Disney College Program. I’ll be able to do all four years of MVs, which is great, because I’ll get my mug!

Before you went to biomed, what were you doing? What inspired the shift?

Mechanical engineering. A lot of what I wanted to do with mechanical was working on animatronics for Disney. In the last couple of months, seeing a lot of my family members with their medical issues kind of inspired me – that’s what I want to do, help people. I do a lot of service stuff… and I just love to help people in every aspect of what I do. I think the biomedical engineering is something that my dad has really inspired because he has a pacemaker and a defibrillator in him – growing up knowing that was saving his life every day, any time he could possibly need it, was really inspiring. It was like, I could do that with my degree and help more people and take our technology to a new level of innovation. 

What extracurriculars outside of the MVs did you engage in?

My freshman year, I joined SWE, which is the Society of Women Engineers. It gets me tons of networking events, I get to meet a ton of people and I’ve made tons of friends. It’s such a wide group. 

Photo courtesy of Lauren Powell

I’m also part of Valiant Indoor Guard, which is more spring semester, so I get to spin all year-round, which is fantastic! I’ll be serving as our treasurer this year. It’s really nice to have that change of pace in color guard and step away from the marching style to go more towards the story-telling. It’s like a totally different thing with indoor color guard because you have all of your weapons, you can do really insane flag tricks that you can’t do in Lane Stadium. There’s also the dance component. It’s a lot more artistic.

I’m also a part of Line Dance VT, which is our line dancing club. I’ll be serving as treasurer this year. It’s a nice group of people – just kind of getting people out, getting them on their feet. The last one is, I’m in Alpha Sigma Kappa, which is a social sorority for women in technical studies. It’s a lot more laid back from your actual sororities, but we do a lot of service events and philanthropy, and social events. 

How would you say the MVs impacted your time at Tech?

It is the best decision I’ve ever made at VT. I could say changing my major was an amazing decision, joining every organization I’ve joined is an amazing decision, but the MVs is the best one. I’ve made some of my closest friends and met so many awesome people. 

How would you say being in another organization outside of the MVs has benefited you?

It’s definitely been beneficial to me, because I’ve been able to meet people in similar majors who’ve had similar struggles. They know that experience and can help you through it. It’s really nice to have that support system academically. Being able to find those people and connect the dots is super nice. If I wasn’t in any of those organizations, who would I hang out with?

Photo courtesy of Lauren Powell

How have you managed your time?

One thing that I learned in my Hypatia class freshman year was to literally schedule my Google Calendar minute by minute. Importing all of your stuff from Canvas, your classes, the games, all the sorority events – I’m really able to manage it all and be like, so I can’t go this event, so I can do this, so I’ll go to this event instead. It works really well for me. Weekend off from band? I’m doing my homework for the next week. 

What advice do you have for folks who are new to the MVs?

Try everything. I went to GobblerFest freshman year, tried everything I could, went to a couple meetings – if I felt like it was a good path for me, I stuck with it. If you’re scared to join the MVs, at least give it a try for a semester and see how it goes. A lot of people talk about freshman year being scary and it definitely was but MVs was the one thing that really helped me.

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Lauren is from Strasburg, Pennsylvania.