FOR 21 YEARS AND COUNTING VINCE ARIZZI DIRECTS THE BAND THAT PUTS THE PEP IN CHESTERTON BASKETBALL GAMES

Tom Keegan
Onwardtrojans.com

The homecourt advantage feels greater at some Chesterton basketball games than others, and it felt, sounded, and looked particularly dynamic on back-to-back nights in late January.
The presence of a juicy DAC rivalry certainly played a part in the elevated adrenaline in Chesterton’s gymnasium for a girls basketball game on a Thursday night, a boys game the next, both against Crown Point.
The entertainment value of both well-played games certainly kept the building buzzing for the girls’ 49-37 win and the boys’ 50-49 loss decided on the final possession.
But another common denominator from those two nights brought the wholesome intensity to an even greater level: the music. The pep band filled the bleachers behind the basket closest to the Chesterton bench.
Vince Arizzi has 21 years in the books now counting director of the high school pep band among his many duties, which include but are far from limited to director of musical education at Liberty Intermediate and Middle schools.
“It’s a blast working with him,” Chesterton student Vincent Mueller said. “He’s really funny and charismatic.”
The feeling is mutual or Arizzi wouldn’t still be doing it.
“It’s a really fun group, especially since for us, this is not our varsity sport,” Arizzi said. “Our kids do marching band or they do show choir or they do all these other competitive activities. For us, this is just the fun stuff.”
About 80 young musicians played in the pep band this season, although not all on the same night. They come and go. When a conflict arises, other music responsibilities take precedence.
The pep band has just three rehearsals at the beginning of the season “to learn most of the music, and the rest of the season we’ll warm up and play a tune and then put it out here,” Arizzi said. “I think the kids appreciate that mentality, that we’re not going to burn them out with this activity. These are high academic kids. Half these kids are 5 percenters, high-achieving kids, so we have to keep this in control a little bit and have fun with it.”
They play 10 games a season, he said. The vast majority this season were girls games.
The musicians are true to the music and well- prepared so that they sound good, and they’re allowed to be true to themselves in their fashion choices. Their jerseys are uniform, other than the “goofy nicknames” they choose for the backs of them, but other than that, they call the sartorial shots. Sunshine and Twinkle Toes, Yay Yay and LillyBug play in the pep band.
Cameron Pace is “Tuba Man.” Mueller is “Tuba Boy.”
“This is his first year playing tuba, so he had to be Tuba Boy,” Pace said of his friend, next to whom he sits. “This is my third year playing tuba, so I’m Tuba Man.”
Mueller played trombone in previous years in the pep band. He also plays in the marching band, concert band and the after-school jazz club.
“Jazz is a blast to play,” Mueller said. “It’s fun to improvise.”
Mueller always wears a gray fedora to the games. Pace’s chapeau of choice is a yellow construction helmet. A flowered cotton floppy hat here, a bucket hat there, a hot pink trilby hat, a basic ballcap, a lime green fedora, a full head of fuchsia hair, as many different looks as personalities, all in synch when playing and playing with pep.
Mueller named Bruno Mars’ “Runaway Baby” as his favorite song to play. Pace said “Dynamite” is his.
“I don’t know who it’s by,” Pace said. “We hear a lot from our director that people like it. The team likes it, and he’s heard from the coaches that they like it.”
Naturally, Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline” is another fan favorite.
Jon Flodder, director of Trojan Guard, Chesterton’s marching band, also directed the pep band at his previous stop and he missed it, so Arizzi welcomed him to share pep band director duties with him this season.
“Every once in a while, myself or Mr. Flodder will grab an instrument and play,” Arizzi said shortly before the girls game tipped off against Crown Point. “I thought I was going to have to play trumpet tonight, but it looks like we have enough trumpet players.”
The next night, the band was short a trumpet player, so to the seeming delight of the students, Arizzi filled in.
Ask around enough at a high school basketball game played in Indiana and you’re bound to find someone with a connection to the late Bob Knight.
Ninth-year Chesterton boys basketball coach Marc Urban, for example, was team manager his first three years at Indiana State and a walk-on player his fourth for the late Sycamores coach Royce Waltman, an assistant to Knight at Indiana University for six seasons in the 1980s, his final one the year IU won the national title on Keith Smart’s jumper in 1987.
Arizzi said he was a freshman playing in IU’s basketball band in Knight’s final year as coach (1999-2000).
“The band travels with the team for tournaments, so we went to the NCAA tournament and he popped by to say hi, but he was all business,” Arizzi said. “He was getting to his next thing.”
Although nobody knew it then, Knight’s next thing was his last thing for IU, a 77-57 first-round loss to Pepperdine in Buffalo. Six months later, freshman Kent Harvey walked past Knight on campus and said, “Hey Knight, what’s up?” The coach grabbed the student by the arm and gave him a stern lecture for addressing him so disrespectfully. Then-IU president Myles Brand used the incident as the final straw, deemed it a violation of the zero-tolerance policy he had put the coach on, and fired him.
Arizzi, a considerably less volatile leader, also demands perfection. As Knight did with his motion offense, Arizzi considers everyone’s role to be of equal value to bringing about harmony.
“I write and arrange most of the music for them,” Arizzi said. “I make sure I arrange all the music in a way that everybody’s important. We kind of spread out the importance.”