2022 Arts Award: the Screaming Eagles Marching Band and Golden Eagles Dance Team

by Margot Striegel ‘24

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Golden Eagles Dance Team:
Chloe Andriani '23

Alexandra Garner '23

Screaming Eagles Instrument Team:
Leah Gerrish '22
Lily Walsh '22
Matthew McCoy '22

Before we talk more about the Marching Band, tell us about yourselves!

Chloe: I'm one of the section leaders of the Golden Eagles Dance Team, which is the official dance team of the Screaming Eagles Marching Band. I'm from Port Jefferson, NY, which is a very small town, and I've been dancing my whole entire life from around the age of 3. I've done a variety of different dance styles, different performances, like the Nutcracker too which was really cool. I'm a junior, and I'm majoring in Biology and minoring in Finance. 

Lily: I'm a senior this year, and I was Cross-Training Coordinator of the band for two years and Social Media Coordinator for one. I study History and Secondary Education. I came into the band—I actually came into the band playing flute—freshman year. I played piccolo, and then I cross-trained to trombone, which was a big job. We like to do a lot of cross-training to kind of get more of the drum course out on the field. And, I'm from Mansfield, MA.

What is cross training?

Lily: Like switching from a woodwind instrument. So, piccolo or saxophone is what we have, and then you take Brass Class in the Spring. That's kind of what I would help coordinate, and that's where you learn a new brass instrument. Then the next season, you would come in and play that instrument.  

Leah: I'm also a senior. I'm majoring in Accounting and Marketing and minoring in Gender and Women's Studies. I'm from Bellingmon, MA, which is Southern Mass. I was a Section Leader for the drumline this year, and I came into the band actually not having a ton of experience with drumlines. I had done it in my high school, but it wasn't anything like this band. I'm really thankful for how the drumline helped shape my BC career early on and helped me improve as a drummer. 

Matt: I am one of the Fan Engagement Coordinators for the Marching Band. I'm a senior this year, so this is my last year, but I also play trumpet in the band. Coming in, I actually didn't have any marching experience, so I think we have a good swath of [experience levels], like I know Lily had some pretty extensive experience and then there are people like me who didn't really march at all in high school. As Fan Engagement Coordinator, I work with our Director pretty closely to conceptualize ways to get people involved in the band and get the band more public eye rather than just at Football games, so like looking at other opportunities for us to be involved in. I'm also majoring in Computer Science.

Alex: I'm majoring in Accounting and Finance. I'm on the Dance Team, and I'm a member of the Executive Board. This is my third year on the Executive Board, and basically a lot of what we do is behind-the-scenes stuff, so a lot of organizational things which is something that I really love doing and I thought was a great opportunity for me. That tied-in with the Dance Team with Chloe, I came from 10 years of competition background, so the Dance Team is a really cool—I call it—half-and-half. I wanted to do Cheerleading in high school, and I always loved having school spirit and getting pretty involved on campus and stuff, so that got me really super involved with game days and all the school spirit, but I still get to do all of the stage performances I grew up with and I love. Then, the eboard is just really a great opportunity to get to know the band in ways that I didn't think I would. I get to know all of the members and work with them more closely and help out where I can, so it makes Marching Band a meaningful experience in-and-of-itself, but being on the eboard and being so closely connected with the members makes it more meaningful. 

BCMB on stage with the Dropkick Murphys

Have you had any experiences with the Dance Team or Marching Band that have been particularly meaningful to you?

Matt: I've had a lot of experiences over the past four years that have been pretty unique experiences in terms of what we do. Starting furthest back, we actually played at a Redsocks game, and we played the National Anthem in Center Field which was a really cool experience; being able to go out on the field of a major baseball stadium was really a dream come true for me. Then, shortly after that, we played in the Celtics halftime. We played our halftime show on the court which was pretty cool. Most recently, I actually got to play on stage with Jason Derulo, so that was a really cool experience, a nice way to cap off my career in the Marching Band. [My] last time in uniform was actually just performing with a huge artist which isn't really something we get to do a lot. It kind of makes me wish I had one more year because the ability to play with artists like that now and the exposure that we got from that can catapult us into a pretty wide array of other [artists]. Things like that are going through my mind: where the band can go next. I think those are the best opportunities we had besides just the Football games—being able to go out into the public and show more than just the BC community what we have to offer. 

Alex: One of the best experiences for me was actually something we did recently. So this year, "Phantom of the Opera" was our headline show, and we got the opportunity to film a music video  in the Boston Opera House with the principal dancer from the Boston Ballet, John Lam, so that was a fantastic opportunity, just being in such an iconic location, where "Phantom of the Opera" has come many times. Getting to work with John Lam was a really great experience. It was a great way for me to end my senior year as a Marching Band member. 

Lily: I'd say for me, I have really liked all of the high profile stuff that we've done, but when I think of my favorite memories, they're made of the smaller moments with the band. So, I think of freshman year, coming to band camp like 10 days earlier before everyone else, and I met Matt and Leah because we were the same year and especially Matt because he lived on Newton, so my core group of friends now is pretty much a few of us who started the band together. Kind of having that family as soon as we came in has always been one of my favorite memories, and that makes me think of our Band Family Program, too. It's kind of like if you think of Bigs and Littles for Marching Band, so if you come in as a freshman, you get assigned a band parent, an upperclassmen, and you can live with them for the first few days of band camp and kind of turn to them throughout the rest of the season, the rest of your years, and have that relationship with an upperclassmen right away too. I liked our experiences, I liked the bowl games—the ones that didn't get canceled—,  but I like the smaller things too. Alex is actually in my band family. 

Chloe: There are so many wonderful moments that you can capture being in the Marching Band, but I think probably mine is performing at the halftime shows on Gameday. For us, it's a very long day, but it goes by so fast because it's just jam packed with so many wonderful moments. For the dance team, you know, just getting ready together, doing hair and makeup, playing some music, getting into the Zone, and then also for the halftime shows, there's no better feeling than the fireworks going off, huddling around Football players running through, the tunnel that we form, shaking our poms. When we're actually dancing and the instrumentalists are playing during the halftime show, it's like there's a rush that is indescribable with 40,000 fans all around. It's amazing. We're just united with our commitment to each other in that moment, mixing dance and music together, and it's just amazing what we can all do when we come together. 

Leah: Mine was probably freshman year, it was the Centennial Year for the band and it was homecoming weekend. We had a bunch of alumni from the band come back and play with us during the halftime show, so we didn't do [a lot of our] elaborate moves and stuff like that, the set changes or anything, we just spread out. "Mega Eagles'' is what we called it. We just had everyone fill in. We had old color guard come back in—we don't have a color guard anymore—, the baton twirlers came back, and it was just really cool because the dance team was actually lined up at the back of the field for performance. I just got to look forward. I was towards the middle too, so just looking forward it was like 100s of band members, and some of them came out with their families. I remember there was a [member] that had a baby strapped on during the performance and she was asleep during the performance. You just got to see them. They were all so hype with the band and they were just seeing each other again for the first time in a long time. Then, we had a banquet afterwards, and one of our band traditions is we link arms, form a circle, and we sing “Piano Man”. Normally when we do it, we put the seniors in the middle, but this one we just made a big circle at our banquet afterwards and everyone knows that tradition of ours and it was just really cool. You see that it's not just your four years of college that you're in the band like a fun dinner party story or something. It's something that really sticks with you. That family that sticks with you forever, those memories that will stick with you forever, and you just really saw the results of that when all of these families came back.

Lily: If I could add to that, I think there were like 300+ of us on the field including alumni.

Matt: That was one of the few times where you get to see just how much for family it is. Obviously we see it everyday with our peers, but these alumni came back that had no reason to really except that they wanted to, and it was really cool. They came on the field and they immediately were just the happiest people on earth being able to come back and play with the band one more time. It was a really cool experience. Now, I'm looking forward to 125 to see if we still can get in. One other thing that we didn't actually mention is Pops on the Heights. So we actually get to play with Boston Pops! I think for any musician that is a really exclusive opportunity, but the fact that we've had three or four opportunities to play with one of the best ensembles in the world is a really cool experience, you know, being directed by Keith Lockheart. It's a really cool experience just seeing how he operates and seeing how different that is to our drum majors and conductors, but it's still something I've treasured. 

Alex: One thing we didn't really talk about was the opportunity we've had to go to a Bowl Game every year with the Football team. In our time at least, we've experienced two Bowl Games stopping in the middle…after we had already gotten to BC and packed the buses. So, we've had some pretty funny experiences come out of Bowl Games, but for all the craziness, there's just a lot of funny memories. 

Chloe: Even then, it was a fun experience because we were all there together. We flew to Dallas on Christmas our freshman year and it didn't feel like we were missing that much because we were all together, like a big family gathering every time we were together. Even if we don't have, you know, a specific performance or just anything that were supposed to be doing for practice or rehearsal, we will all make sure that we come together if its like once a week, twice a week, going to White Mountain, just really honing in how important family is on this campus.

Leah: And we actively dont BC look away.

Alex: At any given time you can find a group of band members out on the quad when it's a nice day, or in the Rat, always in the Rat.

Lily: I don't think I've met a more welcoming group. 

Matt: Starting out, it's such a good experience. My dad was in a fraternity in college and based on my experiences, he was like "that's the exact same thing". You start off knowing nobody, but you immediately have like 150 best friends. As soon as you recognize them, you can say Hi and they'll smile and say Hi back, and even if that's the extent of your interaction, it's going to make your day better. Then we have our closer relationships like Lily said. We met the first day trying on our uniforms together and we’re still best friends four years later. You keep these relationships over the four years which is really cool. 

What does participating in this group bring or add to your life here?

Chloe: You know, we've been covered by a mask for so long, like almost [all of] our college experiences, and this is the first year that it's been what I would call new normal or back to normal, and a smile can go a long way. With the BCMB, we're scattered all across this campus. You can smile at anyone and they can not be having a great day, but [a smile] seriously goes a long way.

Lily: I would also just add that we always joke about how the announcers will come on [during] our halftime show and they'll say "the largest and most physical student organization on campus", but it's nice to be part of something at BC that everyone knows and for the most part admires to. It's fun to get fans hyped up. It's fun to know we have a place at Gameday and Football games and feel like an integral part of campus.

Alex: I think what we talked about, personal connections, are the best for me because there's a bajillion dance groups on campus. I could have joined one of those, and it would have been a great experience, and I'm sure they have their sense of family, but there really is something different about the level of community that we have. So, Lily was talking about the Band Family Program, and she was my band mom, and one of my best friends and my roommate this year is my band cousin (so, Lily's roommate's band kid). Lily and Heidi (Lily's roommate) made a little map of the Newton bus system for us [freshman year] with little notes, and we made a little Newton group chat and started hanging out. It just kind of builds from there, and it builds so quickly. I came up, there was no one from my high school; I'm from Florida, so I'm sure far from home, I don't have family up here or anything. It was super daunting walking into all of this, and then we show up for band camp and it's just immediate how quickly people help you transition. That's the thing: they want to help you transition, and they want to talk to you and get to know you and stuff like that. That was super meaningful to me. I didn't feel the rough transition that I think a lot of college freshmen might feel coming in. You're coming into band camp, and you don't have a second to think about being homesick. It's just such a support system that has been super meaningful and has been here for me for three years and meant a lot. 

Leah: Going off of that, not only do we have a support system among our peers and each other, but we have a great network of mentors as well. We have David Healey our director, we have instructors within each of the sections, and they're all super great people. They're hard working and so talented. The band wouldn't be the band without them. Like for example, Dave Healey has this thing called "Tea Time" where you can go into his office and have tea with him. He makes it his goal to have tea with every single member of the band. From any given year, there's 130-150 students, and he wants to know everyone's name and everyone's story. It's really inspiring just how personable he is. He seems really scary like at the beginning of it all, but he's really sweet and he really cares about all of us.

Matt: Seeing his dedication to his job is really inspiring because it's not a job for him, it's a lifetime passion that he is able to get paid for. I think that that's a really good trait to have in a director—somebody who cares about the entire ensemble, especially when we're getting emails at 3 o'clock in the morning from him. He's trying to figure out a sleep schedule, and he can't because he is always sending us emails super late at night. He's always just reminding us. It could be something about the music during the season or it just could be like, "Hi Matthew. Please come down to my office. I want to get tea with you," like Leah was saying. He just wants to be a part of our lives, more than just like a professor or another teacher or director would be. That's kind of what keeps us all pretty bound together throughout it every year. The leadership is there, and it kind of trickles down into the section leaders and then into the upperclassmen and then underclassmen. We all kind of are inspired by him. 

Do you have any advice for students who want to get involved or want to get more involved with the groups on campus?

Lily: [BCMB is] always taking new people, I would say. I know we've talked about our culture of inclusivity. People have come in playing one instrument and have picked up a totally different one, people have learned throughout the years to play different instruments. I know everyone who's ever played an instrument gets an email from us: "Join the BCMB!" That doesn't stop freshman year. If people are interested in joining, we'll definitely take them under our wing.

Matt: We try to say no experience necessary, and that's pretty true in the Spring with the Brass Class. These people really just have to have the urge to succeed, and that's pretty much all you need. In Brass Class, he's going to teach [you] how to play the instrument and then also how to interpret music and be a successful musician. People all the time will come up to us especially after game weekends and be like:
"That was so cool" 
"Thanks. Do you know anyone that wants to play with us?" 
"Yeah I actually played guitar in high school" 
"You know, you could be part of our front ensemble." 
"Oh, I didn't know that that was possible". 
So, I think that even people who don't think it's possible to be a part of the ensemble can still find their way. Like, we have an electric violin this year. Two of them. So we can always find a way to get somebody involved in our ensemble, and I think that's really great because we can kind of adapt to be flexible to anyone and help them achieve success however they want. 

Alex: Yeah, Dance Team's a little bit different. Dance Team [does] have an audition process, but it's still kind of no experience required. I came in with a competition background [in] Jazz, Lyrical, Ballet, that stuff, but I'd never done Pom before, I've never done Kick Line before, and yesterday I think we did 500 kicks in a row at rehearsal. It's stuff like that that I thought I'd never be doing, and they taught us how to do [it] here. There's some girls that have more Pom background, we have a couple of Gymnasts on the team, and we have someone who does Baton. Once you make it on the team, it's still so many things that are new to you. I have plenty of things that I've done on the team that I've had no experience in prior to this. It's really cool to be able to learn that, and we get to help each other too. I always love it. I've done choreography for a couple performances, and it always feels very collaborative. Everyone wants to help each other when they're doing it, so if it's just some quick advice on choreography or it's "I can't figure out how to do something", I'll go talk to Chloe, we'll try to talk through it. It's that kind of stuff that you learn from everyone along the way. Also, the Instrument Team semi-taught me how to play the trombone, so they can teach anyone. 

Matt: Also, our practices are open to the public. So, Tuesdays and Thursdays, any student can come and watch and see what we do. If they are sitting close enough to Dave, he'll go up and ask what's going on and try to require them basically. I think it's a good opportunity if you're on the fence to just come by and watch a practice and see what we do and how we operate. If that inspires you, then reach out. 

Lily: We also have coordinators that are dedicated for when we're doing our practices in the Fall when we're on the field. We have alternance coordinators [for] when we get new members that sign up. They'll get to walk through [our practices]. Last year, we were teaching a few of our new members how to march part of the way through the season, so I think if students want to join mid-season because they like what they're seeing on the field, they absolutely can, even though it seems a little bit daunting because by that point we've had band camp and we know all of the sets that we’re doing and things like that; but, we have so many people that are so dedicated by job and dedicated by just excitement for the band who will help out and get you integrated as quickly as possible. 

Chloe: Like Alex, I came from a similar competitive dance background, and I was a cheerleader in high school too, so coming into college I really wanted to do both. The Marching Band provided me with the best of both worlds, still incorporating all the styles that I used to do in high school while also doing Cheer and Pom on Gamedays. All the different styles: I think that's what makes us so unique, and we're willing to help and do whatever we can to make sure every dance member on our team succeeds and is feeling confident from the time that they enter practice, to the time they leave practice, [to when they] step on the field—the biggest stage BC has to offer, which is amazing—,[to] just any performance. What's so beautiful about being around like minded individuals in the band and being the section leader for three years [is that] I've seen our wide range of acceptance and adaptability. We want to do everything that we can to make sure that everyone succeeds in our program. 

Leah: Similar to inclusivity, [BCMB] has our Partner Schools programs. You don't even have to be a part of Boston College to be part of the Marching Band. We really accept any student who's willing to travel here, so we say the Greater Boston Area and students from around Boston, but we've even had students from around Worcester from the Northshore who drive to be a part of our band. That's added a whole new dimension to our band, just having students from their schools with different experiences. It's been very enriching, and that's been part of our program that we were trying to build up recently. We're trying to make it more well known that we accept anyone from the Boston area, which is huge because a lot of the schools in Boston don't have a Marching Band, so students who go to those schools who really enjoyed their Marching Band in high school have a chance to continue it in college. Right now, we feel like not enough people know about that. 

This year's Arts Fest Theme is "New Nostalgia”. What does this mean to you, reflecting on your time in the BCMB?

Alex: As far as New Nostalgia, I feel like that kind of just fits the band in general. Like I said, I'm from Florida, so my whole family went to [Florida State University] and Marching Band and Football and stuff like that is very nostalgic to us. That's just something I always grew up with, and so the idea of the Football games and Marching Band being the essence of school spirit is very nostalgic and stood the test of time. The new part is all of these videos that we're doing, the variety shows, the music videos. We're taking the new media that we have access to, and we're able to work with it and use it to help promote artistic expression in ways that we didn't think were possible before. We're doing things that other Marching Bands across the country and across the ACC aren't doing because we saw the opportunity and we're seizing it. I just think it's like: you always have the Marching Band—that's like the essence of school spirit—but we're taking that and spinning it in a new way…We’re kind of pushing ourselves to be better and to be better for the band, so that really helps us refine and expand our artistic skill. 

Lily: I think New Nostalgia for me as I've been thinking about it would be a newfound gratitude for the things that we love. Showtime was great [and] the inventiveness of the COVID year brought us together in new ways. I think the return to normal, kind of entering the post-lockdown days as I was participating with the band especially in my senior year, [made me] miss things while they were happening. I think the flip side to this is gratitude and just being grateful for the opportunity to come together one last time.

Leah: The Centennial to COVID was such a shift, and having this last season has been incredible.

Matt: It's so cliche, but that quote from the Office: "How do you know you're in the Golden Days before they're over?" Every performance opportunity this year was a gift because we didn't know if it would be our last one. I think [we were already living in] the nostalgia everyday, realizing that this is something that you have to treasure while you're still here because it'll be over in four years before you know it.

Chloe: I can say that I'm so proud to be part of this organization.

Us at the Arts Journal are grateful for the opportunity to interview the BCMB and get to know more about them and the Arts On Campus.

Edited by: Sindey Amar 24’