Hurricane Matthew might have forced Florida State's Marching Chiefs to skip their scheduled trip to Miami earlier this month, but it won’t keep them -- or their famed “Warchant” -- off the road altogether.
Thanks to the quick work of FSU's band directors, athletics department officials and others, the Marching Chiefs now will be in full force for the Seminoles' Nov. 5 trip to North Carolina State -- a game they originally were going to miss.
David Plack, director of athletic bands, told Warchant.com late Monday he couldn’t remember another instance where the Chiefs pulled together a road trip this late into a season. But after the disappointment of having the Miami trip scrapped due to storm-related safety concerns, he said the band’s leadership knew they had to do something.
“Miami, for us, has always been a full band, two-night trip,” Plack said. “So when that was canceled, we just felt disappointed for the students. That’s a big deal for them. So we were disappointed. We wanted to be there for the team. And we thought we were going to be there until just literally a couple of hours before we were set to leave.”
As soon as university officials pulled the plug on the UM trip, Plack and Patrick Dunnigan, FSU's director of bands, immediately started working to see if the N.C. State game might be a replacement option. The Chiefs had gone to Raleigh, N.C., before -- both with the entire band and with a smaller pep band -- so they had some idea of the logistics involved.
But with the game less than a month away, they knew it was going to be tough to pull off.
“We’ve never put anything together this late -- not that I can remember,” Plack said. “We have to plan our travel pretty far in advance. You’re talking about reserving eight buses, 140 hotel rooms.”
When the full band travels, Plack said, they take as many as 420 students. (They used to take even more, but they now cap it at 420 to keep the number of buses at eight.) And with a limited budget, they must be judicious about which games they attend away from Doak Campbell Stadium.
For FSU’s season opener against Ole Miss in Orlando, the entire band made the trip, but Plack said they went “there and back.” For the USF game in Tampa, the Chiefs sent a smaller pep band, and that group also went “there and back.”
Going to N.C. State on short notice, of course, would be much more challenging. The Chiefs would need a block of tickets at Carter-Finley Stadium to accommodate well over 400 people, they would need a hotel with plenty of vacancies, and they would also have to acquire the buses.
“My first concern was the tickets,” Plack said. “I thought they might have the number of tickets we needed, but would they have 'em in a block? I thought they might have 15 here, 25 there and 100 over there. That wouldn’t do us any good.”
The call to Jack Chatham, FSU’s director of ticket operations, was met with good news.
“Much to our surprise, he said he did have a block of tickets,” Plack said. “That was the first hurdle.”
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The Chiefs' next call was to Annett Bus Lines, and eight buses were secured without problem.
“The last hurdle was finding a hotel,” Plack said.
And that one wasn’t as easy. Because all the hotels in the Raleigh area were booked for the game weekend, the closest option they could find was in Greensboro, N.C., more than an hour away.
It wasn’t ideal, but it wasn’t a deal breaker.
“Everything just kind of fell into place,” Plack said.
Because the trip was unexpected, the Chiefs are not requiring ever member to attend. But judging by the students' excitement when it was announced that the N.C. State game might be an option, Plack said he doesn’t believe many will miss.
“Their reaction really caught me by surprise,” he said. “They were genuinely, really pumped.”
Plack said he is especially excited because the N.C. State game figures to be challenging for the 'Noles. The Wolfpack are 4-2 and narrowly missed knocking off ACC favorite Clemson this past Saturday. Carter-Finley Stadium also is one of the most hostile stadiums in the ACC, and Plack said the Chiefs will be happy to balance out the noise.
Aside from the distance to the hotel, the only other drawback is that the Chiefs won’t be able to perform their halftime show. N.C. State already has the entire intermission booked with its own band performance and a Military Appreciation Day tribute.
But Plack said no one is complaining -- not after they thought their one big trip of the year would be lost completely: “We’re gonna sit in the stands, play lots of ‘Warchant’ and support the team.”
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