Marching Virginians

Many of my fond memories of college revolve around the marching band; the Marching Virginians.  Nowadays, they like being called the Spirit of Tech because Virginians sounds too much like ....

The band started in 1974 and it took a few years for it to become successful.  I had some influence into that success.  In  1979, the band director, James Sochinski, arranged "We Will Rock You" by Queen and the Tuba section started playing around with a dance.  He saw that and the following year, he arranged the Hokie Pokie and presented the Subculture (i.e., tuba players) with a challenge.  Could we dance the Hokie Pokie?

Well, we got together as a section and did a bit of choreography.  When we broke into the chorus line for the first time during a halftime show, we got the crowd's attention.  The routine has changed little over the past few years, and it has become the signature song for the band, and to a certain extent, the university.

Every so often, they have an alumni weekend where old MV's are asked to return.  The photograph above is from practice at the 30th anniversary in 2004.  I'm the one after the gap in the line.  I learned that dancing with a tuba 20+ years after graduation is not as easy as it was. 

Just to give you an idea, the 2009 version of the alumni band is shown in the attached video.  It's a bit jittery.  The Hokie Pokie starts at about 3 minutes in.  The chorus line is about a minute later.

Their official web site goes into more detail about the history of the band.