What'd you do today, Elliot? Oh, y'know. Just conducted my band on national television. The usual.

The Yale Men's Hockey team had an incredible season, and I got the chance to follow them every step of the way as Drum Major of the Yale Precision Marching Band. Though as a marching band our primary focus is on football season in the fall, we keep playing Pep Band style at sporting events throughout the spring, with Hockey as one of the favorites.

Yale Hockey is poetry. Brutal, violent poetry that slams people into glass walls.

So clearly, the only appropriate way to conduct a band at such an event is with an enormous battle axe.

But the whole experience of a home game with the hockey team and YPMB becomes so much more than that. We pump up the crowds to a fever pitch with our music, anything from Lady Gaga's Bad Romance to an amplified electric guitar solo backed up by an enormous brass band in our version of Smells Like Teen Spirit. Between songs, we keep the crowd going by leading enormous cheers ("You have knives on your feet... USE THEM!!") Words can't convey the level of adrenaline at these events.

Bangin', blowin', generally rocking out.

The band played at all the hockey home games this season and got funded by the Athletics Department to travel with the team to Worcester, Mass, to cheer on the team as they attempted to make history in the NCAA Playoffs. The team spent most of the season ranked around #5 nationally, and came out on top of the East Coast Athletic Conference Hockey League, scoring them a spot in the NCAA Playoffs.

We were a single game off from making the Frozen Four, but even going that far was an incredible experience. Sports aside for one moment, there's nothing quite like conducting your band in an arena nearly filling its 15,000 seat capacity, broadcast live over ESPN. My phone wouldn't stop buzzing with texts from friends on campus, relatives, people from home, gushing about how loud and powerful the band sounded on national TV.

Our hockey team had a particular penchant for extraordinary comebacks in the last second- my favorite example was the Senior Day game against Clarkson. After spending most of the game down 1-4, the Bulldogs had an unbelievable surge by scoring 3 goals in 51 seconds to force overtime and ultimately win 5-4. This video by Yale Athletics captures some of the absurdity of that game-- especially look out for the clip around 2:32-2:39, where Broc Little gets gleefully crushed in celebratory hugs by his entire team after his third goal in less than a minute tied it up.

(Although, musicians may notice that they edited the footage a bit; what I'm conducting doesn't match up with the band's sound at all.)

Look out for the YPMB over Bulldog Days- we'll be playing at a ton of events, so you'll actually have a hard time not seeing us. I'll be out there in front conducting the band as we fill your lives with musical awesomeness.