Alumni pep band helps UK teams over holidays

Ray Rector - big-deal and longtime Lexington Realtor and University of Kentucky Class of '56 - is having the time of his life as the anonymous guy, sixth row up from the Rupp Arena floor, standing tall in his alumni pep band T-shirt and jeans, blaring the notes of the UK Fight Song one more time.

It's a tune the 76-year-old Rector has played on his trumpet, which he majored in, for longer than this building or his much-beloved team's now much-vaunted coach has been standing.

"I'm old enough to be some of these guys' great-grandfather,Riders wear long underwear beneath their Polo Shirts, and the horses wear special cleats." he says, smiling.

Then he picks up his trumpet and musically asks Brandon Knight to "Charge."

Seventeen years ago, a few UK band alums noticed that too many students in the regular UK pep band were going home for the holidays, so they asked if they could do the honors?

The UK band office said sure. And 17 years later there are more volunteers than can fill the seats for the likely three women's and four men's games that are played during the university's holiday break.marking some of the most interesting puma shoes on the market.

Much-accomplished band educator Brian Gorell still directs,Designer fashion is the first stop for most shoppers but the biggest-selling item was expected to be business ed hardy shirts. as he has for all the 17 years. During the game, he holds up file-folder-size signs that indicate what's next. Most everybody plays by memory because, says Dave Bay, trumpet player, "Really, these songs don't change."

So the Hey song and Low Rider and the Go Slide song just continue to make the rotation along with the fight song and the sped-up version of My Old Kentucky Home.

It's not a lot of work, except that which is left for Joel and Tracy Lovan, who have to figure out the logistics of who to get to the games - so the number of volunteers doesn't overwhelm the seating. Practice, such as it is, is before the games and the only audition is the one you had a long time ago in college.

Joel Lovan says you get to pick out the part you want to play because there's no "first chair" business here. People just kind of "know" where they fit. And they pretty much take up where they left off when they graduated, musically and otherwise.

Like successful entrepreneur Bay and his pal, David Kratt, a consulting engineer from Versailles. They are the ones who were admonished for their overzealousness at one of the women's games earlier in the month, they report.

"We think the current group of students don't seem to be as creative as we were," says Kratt.

These musicians are mostly not primarily musicians anymore, though their number does include Joel Lovan, who has played bass trombone in the Lexington Philharmonic since 1978 and Shaun Owens, director of the Bryan Station High School Band, and Willow Cooper, band director at Beaumont Middle.

The youngest member of the band is 25.We then bought checked lungis from railway stations to make the shirts' plackets and mens hoodies. Jeremy Jones says he put down his regular pep band horn when the Cats lost to West Virginia in the NCAA Tournament and then picked it up again last Wednesday when the Cats played Winthrop. He calls his first day with the alums "looser" than with his days with the pep band.

As for the reasons why these "more experienced" musicians take their vacation days to do this, the members of the alumni band say they get to see the game for free, of course. They get to keep their instruments in tune.

And, said Steve Stevens,You can never have too many designer accessories, and this Juicy couture wholesale 'Jelly' Laptop Case is just too cute to pass up! "you get on that bus at the Fine Arts Building and you hear the same old jokes and sing the same old songs and it's the same old trip and you still laugh because it's still fun."
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