Groovers and Shakers

The hardest-working band in college sports is revving up the Patriot Center

The pep band has come a long way from the 30 wide-eyed musicians who played their hearts out all the way to the NCAA Tournament in 2006. The band now has a name (the Green Machine), a director (Michael Nickens, affectionately known as Doc Nix), a manager, scholarships, a drum line (the Mean Green), and now a string section.

But they are still a student-run organization, says the band’s manager Shannon Siemens, a graduate student in music as well as a Green Machine piccolo player. Now 118 members strong, the Green Machine boasts a string section of five violins, eight violas, and a cellist. “It kind of started out as a joke,” says Siemens. A string player jokingly asked to join the band, so the organization officers opened it up to string players. “Ten showed up for that initial meeting,” she says. “so we had Jeremy [Freer, the music graduate student and trumpet player who does many of the band’s arrangements] write parts for them.”

This past fall, the Green Machine traveled to Disney World with the men’s basketball team for the Old Spice Challenge in November. To see the band (and the men’s basketball team) in action at the Patriot Center, visit GoMason.com for basketball schedule information.