Spencer King, Contributing Photographer

SPOKANE –– No. 13 Yale can add one more assist to its box score ahead of Sunday’s matchup against No. 5 San Diego State, courtesy of the University of Idaho’s student band.

Yale’s marching band was not able to secure enough members to travel to Friday’s matchup against Auburn over the University’s spring break, so Idaho’s Vandal Marching Band put on Yale T-shirts and made the 90-minute drive to Spokane to sub in. 

“Everyone was really enthusiastic about covering for the Yale students who couldn’t make it,” Spencer Martin, the University of Idaho’s director of athletic bands told the News. “Universities help universities, and bands help bands.”

Yale Athletics emailed Martin last Sunday afternoon asking if the Idaho band could make it to perform on Friday. Idaho’s band had just finished performing for their own basketball team at the Big Sky conference tournament, so all their equipment was still packed. They were also in the process of preparing for a performance at UIdaho Bound — an admitted students event similar to Yale’s Bulldog Days — for which they had to return to campus the morning following the Yale-Auburn match-up. 

To prepare his band, Martin reached out to members of the Yale Precision Marching Band and looked through old YouTube videos that included clips of their performances, such as a local news segment and a 2013 Yale hockey game.

The band began rehearsing for the game on Friday at 9 a.m., thirty minutes before boarding the bus to Spokane. Due to the time constraint, Martin made the decision to perform just the song “Bulldog,” which he said is simpler to perform than other songs such as “Down The Field.”

“We put all our marbles into ‘Bulldogs,’” he said. “There’s a lot of stuff we didn’t know so we were just trying to have fun with it. We took a lot of our standard U of Idaho chants and just Bulldog’d them up a bit.”

Martin called the band’s performance “pretty bad at first” but noted that it improved over the course of the game. The students got “really into” the different Yale chants, such as “Bulldogs, Bulldogs, bow wow wow,” Martin said. 

After the game, Yale head coach James Jones said the band’s performance “was great.”

“I saw them out there and they had their sheets, so they knew the music in terms of what to play,” Jones said. “Having that atmosphere and them coming out and supporting us, there’s nothing better than that, and we can’t appreciate them more”

Yale forward Danny Wolf noticed it as well, calling it “an incredibly gracious act.”

Neither the band members nor the University of Idaho received any compensation for the performance, but Yale Athletics covered the costs of transportation, Yale T-shirts and pizza. 

“Band kids would do a lot for a t-shirt and pizza,” Martin joked. “We were never gonna charge anyone.”

He said that working with Yale Athletics and the Yale Cheer Squad was a “very pleasant experience.”

Sierra Schultz, a sophomore student in the band, said that March Madness is the highest-profile venue they’ve ever played. 

“We were all really excited and doing research about Yale on the bus to get some background on the school and also their band,” Schultz, who plays the trumpet, said. “All of us were die-hard Yale fans. I wanted Auburn to lose.”

She added that the band members, currently back in Idaho for the UIdaho Bound event, are brainstorming new chant ideas to distract the San Diego State players as they attempt free throws.

The Bulldogs — and the University of Idaho band — will take the court once again Sunday at 9:40 p.m. Eastern at Spokane Arena.