Seconds later, 380 brightly uniformed students race across the football field to their starting positions. Sunlight reflects on brightly polished brass instruments, colorguard members toss sparkling flags, and the excitement that is the halftime show begins to fill the air. The director lifts his baton and the music swells and consumes the 10,000 member audience as the band plays and moves in ever changing patterns across the field. As the final electric chord hangs in the air, the crowd lifts to its feet with a thunder of applause:
"This group is THE Power and Class of New England!"
Although this scene is a common one at football games, the University of Massachusetts Minuteman Marching Band is far from being an ordinary group. In 1998, the UMass Marching Band was awarded the coveted Sudler Trophy as the best collegiate marching band in the United States. In January of 2001, the band marched for President George W. Bush in Washington D.C. at the Presidential Inaugural Parade. And in November of 2001, the band traveled to the Bands of America Grand Nationals Championships and received five standing ovations in front of 60,000 highly knowledgeable marching band fans. The Minuteman Band, and its director, George Parks, is a beloved performer at New England Patriots and New York Giants halftime shows and has performed in three Presidential Inaugural Ceremonies. Indeed, the group is one of the most visible and effective ambassadors of the University of Massachusetts, and students come from all over the country and from across the world to be a part of the Minuteman Marching Band. But what is the proud history of this colorful and illustrious group? Have they always been this big, this intense, and this exciting? Readers will learn about the evolution of the band from its earliest beginnings in the 1870s as the Morris Drum Corps of the Massachusetts Agricultural College through to its current incarnation as "The Power and Class of New England" Minuteman Band of the University of Massachusetts.
