University of Pittsburgh Athletics
11/7/2026 10:00:00 AM | General
The first thing the Pitt band does on a Tuesday evening is jumping jacks.
Then come the partner stretches. Then the whole band, spread across the floor of the Dome, counts along with the drum majors, cheering when someone squeezes out one more rep. Some members are in gym shorts. Others are in everyday clothes, a few in dresses, and a handful in ghost costumes.
It's Halloween week.
It looks like the start of a team practice, because in a lot of ways it is. The band has a weekly training cycle, corrections that sound like film sessions, a director on a lift watching formations from above, and a game-day schedule that starts hours before kickoff.
And it has a job: making every other Pitt team's home event feel like one.
Call them Pitt's other team.
The training week
This year, 255 students are in the marching band. On a game week, the full band rehearses about eight hours, plus a one-hour run-through on game day. The color guard, Golden Girls and drumline add another two to three hours on their own, putting them closer to 10 hours a week.
For head drum major Kennedy Aderogba, a junior and the first Black drum major in program history, the week starts with a reset after performing at volleyball.
"After 5 p.m., I turn off all my electronics," Aderogba said. "I'm on do not disturb, and I have Sunday evenings to myself, just to reset. On Mondays, I want to make sure I'm there, I'm bright, I'm positive and I'm energetic."
She said Monday opens with a restorative stretch.
Tuesday brings another rehearsal. Wednesday might look like a day off, but Aderogba is back in the Dome with the color guard and Golden Girls, tightening tosses and running the halftime routine.
Thursday is another rehearsal. Friday is about pulling everyone together as one unit. Then it's Saturday.
"It's a lot harder to move 260 people than one might think," Aderogba said. "Whenever I'm giving instructions and I see them already moving and getting things done, it just reminds me that we are here because we love our instruments and we love each other."
The week looks different depending on where you stand. Greta Tibus, a sophomore alto saxophone player and squad leader, spends the least time in the Dome.
She gets Wednesdays off. Drumline, color guard and the Golden Girls don't.
Drumline arrives 30 minutes early Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday, said Sam Tristani, a junior bass drummer and squad leader. Tuesdays and Thursdays, they stay two hours or more to work as subsections and as a full line. Fridays, they add another 45 minutes or so for the postgame show.
Once basketball season starts, the juggling gets harder. The band supports football, volleyball, men's basketball and women's basketball, which means the weekly cycle has to flex around four different schedules.
Building a show in a week
The halftime show comes together in about seven days. This week's had three songs: "Night on Bald Mountain," "Skeleton Dance" and "Thriller," with a dance break where members set their instruments down and pick them back up.
Rehearsal builds in layers. Music first, with no movement beyond marching in place. Directors ask questions and members shout answers back, and when someone gets one wrong, the room yells it right back at them.
Then the band walks the drill: bars of 16, angles, diagonals, brass pointed "toward the 50."
The coaching is constant. "Make sure we know why there are holes." "Don't talk, just check and adjust." On one run-through, a director told the band its music was too pretty. Bring the drama.
Staying together takes more than rehearsal time.
"A lot of it is just repetition and practice," Tristani said. "You eventually learn how all the parts and pieces fit together. We also do what's called dubbing to each other, just to check ourselves."
For color guard captain Abbi Bradley, a senior, the sound itself can be the problem.
"We actually try to watch the conductors as much as we can because they give you the tempo that you can see," Bradley said. "Sometimes when you're hearing things, especially in the stadium, it can get kind of fuzzy."
And wind players have to do all of it while moving. Tibus has a short answer for how.
"I have two answers for you. One of them is abs, and the other one is glutes. To be moving and staying upright in that thing, you just flex those two things," Tibus said.
Every run ends the same way, with a call to check and adjust.
Their why
Ask what keeps them there, and the answers have little to do with the sports they play at.
"I think part of it's the people," Tristani said. "You spend so much time around these people that they become some of your best friends. We've definitely progressed a lot since my freshman year, so it's cool to keep coming back and keep getting better."
For Bradley, it's an escape.
"It's a release from classes and things going on outside of band," Bradley said. "You come to the Dome for two hours every day, and you just get to do something you truly enjoy. It's a weird in-between of coming from high school and still having the restraints of being a kid. I call it fake adult life."
For Kathryn Powell, a freshman Golden Girl, the group was a relief.
She arrived as a solo feature twirler in high school, and she said she's happier now that she's not out there alone. Learning to toss and exchange on the same counts as everyone else took an adjustment, but she's less stressed with the group around her.
She knew she'd found her place the first time she performed with them. The Golden Girls' first routine was for their first show, set to "Where Is My Husband."
"The moment we finished that song, I just felt like, this is it," Powell said. "This is where I'm meant to be. I've never felt so accepted and so happy to be in the band before. It was such an overwhelming sense of pride."
Saturday
By Oct. 31, the week had narrowed to a schedule.
Call time was 2:15 p.m. at Trees Hall, followed by a 2:45 run-through in the Dome. Then came Acrisure Stadium, Panther Prowl at 5:15, the March to Victory at 6:30 and pregame at 7:10, 20 minutes before kickoff against Georgia Tech.
The moments members hold onto come from the tunnel. Bradley remembered her freshman year, Louisville in 2023, when the smoke was so thick she couldn't see two feet ahead.
"Everyone just yells 'Here we go!' and then you're literally just running," Bradley said. "It's smoke everywhere, and it's such a surreal experience. Finally, you get out of the smoke and you can see again, and it was just like, 'Whoa, what just happened?'"
Then it ends, and the week starts over. Sunday might mean another game, another sport. By Monday, they do it all over again.
