MINNEAPOLIS, Minn – Sam Seguin didn’t grow up dreaming he would be a member of the University of Minnesota Gophers Marching Band but a seed was planted when he was in seventh grade.
The 2023 Menomonie High School graduate is in his second year as an aerospace engineering and mechanics major at the University of Minnesota and is in second year as a member of “The Pride of Minnesota,” the Gophers Marching Band where he plays the mellophone.
“I didn’t know what school I was going to until mid-March of 2023, and once I had selected the University of Minnesota to attend, I started looking for opportunities to be involved in the marching band,” Seguin said. “In seventh grade band, I went to see the Minnesota marching band indoor concert, so once I knew that I was going to go to the University of Minnesota, I thought that that would be something fun to be a part of, and I looked up how to apply.”
The Gophers are fresh off a trip to the Duke’s Mayo Bowl where the University of Minnesota football team faced off against Virginia Tech in Charlotte, N.C., Jan. 3.
The marching band flew out of Minneapolis Jan. 2, the day before the game, and the full band performed at a fan event that same day. Smaller band groups performed at other events around Charlotte, Seguin said.
On game day, the band had a morning rehearsal before lunch and getting into uniform, then down to Bank of America Stadium for pregame festivities and a 6:30 p.m. kickoff. Both the Gopher marching band and the Virginia Tech marching band performed a pregame and a halftime show, splitting the available time.
Seguin said the band performed half of earlier pregame and halftime shows taken from earlier in the season, but the shows were altered to fit the bowl game time slot.
See the halftime performance on Instagram.
Seguin said auditioning to join the band was quite an extensive process.
“It’s an online application, where I had to record myself playing various musical excerpts and songs on my chosen instrument, the mellophone,” he said. “The audition consisted of a chromatic scale of my entire range, a two octave major scale, the Minnesota Rouser and Go Gopher Victory.
“I also had to submit a personal statement, which I did in the form of an essay, talking about why I wanted to be in the Pride of Minnesota and how I felt previous band experiences had prepared me for the Marching Band.”
The band starts practicing for the upcoming season several weeks before school begins.
“We start practicing about a week and a half before the start of the school year and the first football game,” Seguin said, “and it runs through until the last football game, where we then have very limited rehearsal up until the bowl game, if we make one.”
The band practices four days a week on weeks without a home football game, and on weeks with a home football game, the band will practice six days, with five days on weekdays and one the morning of the game. The practices run from 4:15-6 p.m. on weekdays, and depending on the time of the football game, the Saturday rehearsals can start from anywhere from 5 a.m. to 11 a.m.
Before the season, in “Spat Camp”, we have rehearsals that typically run from 9 AM to 9 PM, with breaks for lunch and dinner, but these take place before the school year starts.
Throughout the season, the band performs an 18 minute pregame show before each home football game. The performs an indoor concert every year, where they will play all of the music from the halftime shows, as well as the school songs.
The band also had a touch with Hollywood this fall when they were hired to promote the film “A Complete Unknown” doing some promotional material with Timothée Chalamet, the star of the film who portrays Minnesota native Bob Dylan.
Seguin started playing piano about the time he was kindergarten or first grade, then switched to the french horn for middle and high school band. Seguin picked up the mellophone, the marching and pep band version of the french horn, in eighth grade. Seguin also learned trumpet in eighth grade, and played trumpet in the MHS jazz band from ninth grade through 12th grade.
In addition to playing in the MHS bands, Seguin was a member of the cross country and track and field teams, performed in several musical productions, the Academic Decathlon team, the National Ocean Sciene Bowl and was the team captain of the Science Olympiad team.