Bluefield's piccolo star marches to new tunes

When the Virginia Tech Hokie football team meets the Western Michigan Broncos in the season home opener at Lane Stadium in early September, Tess Sell hopes to be there in a VT uniform.

Not a football uniform though -- she’s not a football fan. She wants to be a piccolo-playing Marching Virginian.

“I’m a band geek,” she admits. A recent Graham High School honor graduate and rising VT freshman, Sell tried out for the Marching Virginians last week, because “I couldn’t see myself not in a band. I’ve been playing for seven years,” she said.

Her Graham High School band experience is mapping her future. Being a band member is educational, she said. She’s learned to play both the flute and the piccolo. But its attraction is not all about the music. You learn life lessons, too. You learn to appreciate discipline and to manage friendships. Best of all, though, the band becomes your family.

Sell knew she wanted to be a Marching Virginian when she visited one of their practices. “I loved it! They were so funny running around spelling out ‘Hi Mom’ and ‘Hi Dad’ with their bodies.” The MVs were practicing for their annual Parent’s Band Day celebration. It’s one of the activities they sponsor in addition to their mission as the Spirit of Tech. With their high-energy field performances, the MVs speak for all Hokie fans who are limited to hollering from the stands.

Being a Marching Virginian will be a big deal for the young woman from the small school in Bluefield. Replacing Graham’s Southwest District foes such as Richlands, Tazewell, Grundy and Carroll County will be teams from universities like Miami, Virginia, West Virginia and Maryland. Traveling to away games will become a geography lesson in itself. Instead of performing at town squares for a hundred people and Friday night football games for a thousand, Sell will perform for 65,000 noisy ones in Lane Stadium. Her band family will expand from 75 to 330.

For a rookie, this picture can be intimidating. But the all-district, all-county, and Girl’s State band member looks forward to the challenge: “I’ve been practicing,” she said.

For her audition she had to play one prepared and one sight piece, the scales and the VT fight song. That song was a new one for her. Used to fight songs that spur the Graham G-Men on to victory, she had to practice one with the lyrics “Techmen, Techmen . . . LET’S GO TECH!”

As she and her parents loaded the car for the trip to Blacksburg Tuesday morning, Sell was hopeful that she would be a Marching Virginian by the next day.

She wasn’t. It happened Friday. Late Sunday evening, she sent me this e-mail:

“Hi Mrs. Hart, I’ve been at marching and music rehearsals everyday since I’ve been here . . . I’ve not had time to do anything else. I did make the band!!!!!!!!!!. I’m sooooo happy! I was extremely worried all week. I didn’t find out that I made the cut until after band camp. There were 54 piccolos and only 36 spots. So making the band has not only been a blast but also an honor!”

Sell hasn’t had time to worry about the transition from home to a dorm, high school to college. Quickly, the high stakes world of college football and band has usurped the freshman’s life. She’s learning discipline with the band director’s emphasis on uniformity in everything from the shoes she wears to the way she holds her piccolo. She’s learning whistle commands; power, glide and stride steps; and pinwheel maneuvers.

She’s also learning to play new tunes, or old ones made new by the MVs, like “The Hokie Pokie.”

You wouldn’t think childhood poems and songs could morph into blood-stirring fight ones, but that’s what happens with the MVs' rendition of Metallica’s “Enter, Sandman.” Loudly playing a song with lyrics referencing the Sandman, Never-Never Land, “Hush, little baby,” and “Now I lay me down to sleep,” the band leads the fans in jumping as the VT football team runs onto the field, announcing the start of the game. The moment is so electric that you have to hold onto your heart to keep it from jumping into your throat.

Something tells me that at that moment Sell will become a football fan, too.