For Saturday's opening game day and the rest of the season, the Southern Pride Marching Band will have a meal before the game and water and other cold beverages during it thanks to some Aging Eagles.
A dozen local Georgia Southern fans around retirement age started calling themselves "Aging Eagles" two or three years ago. After organizing last spring as a nonprofit corporation for tax-deductible donations and calling on friends of friends, the Aging Eagles Club starts this season with upwards of 140 members.
"I am so excited to see those of you who are here and so excited about this mission and being able to help the marching band - Yes! - and this year is going to be even bigger and better than last year!" Paula Tompkins, the club's president, told members gathered at a bowling alley in mid-August.
Tompkins has loved the sound and sights of college marching bands since her student days at Ohio State University. She and her husband Lee naturally became Eagles fans when all three of their children, in sequence, attended Georgia Southern.
After moving to Statesboro in retirement, the Tompkinses were one of six couples who developed mutual friendships while attending games and dining out together. Another member of the group, Bill Herring, suggested they call themselves Aging Eagles, and Tomkins thought up the logo of an eagle with reading glasses that she and Lee then put on T-shirts as a fun gesture.
"Some people say it was a bad choice and should have been Ageless Eagles - but the initial group was all plus or minus 65," Herring explained.
The club now has some younger members and welcomes anyone, regardless of age, who supports Georgia Southern and its marching band, the organizers are quick to add. Members include alumni and parents, retired faculty members -- and people who are none of those things.
One year ago, Tompkins, who also serves on the GSU Department of Music's advisory board, saw a mission for her previously informal social group. She learned from the department chairman, Dr. Richard Mercier, that nobody was providing lunch for the band members when they arrived hours early for practice before games.
Tompkins approached restaurant owners for help and signed up six Statesboro restaurants to donate pregame meals all last season. This year, the Aging Eagles Club has again recruited restaurants to supply more than 200 meals each game day.
Meanwhile, when Dr. Colin McKenzie arrived in summer 2011 for his first year as director of the Southern Pride, Tompkins emailed him to offer support before the season began. They became friends, and McKenzie supplied a wish list of ways donors could help the band.
So McKenzie, still perspiring from a band practice he left in the hands of his new assistant, arrived at the bowling alley for the August meeting. Tompkins presented him two 100-gallon cooler tubs the club purchased at a cost of almost $600. Mounted on wheels, the tubs will be filled with bottles of water and Powerade - which the club also is providing - for band members to grab when they leave the field.
More expensive items, such as scholarships and a new equipment truck, remain on the wish list for the future.
Two booster groups
The Aging Eagles also are helping McKenzie recruit members for a new GSU Band Boosters organization. So within this calendar year, Georgia Southern's bands will go from having no official booster group to having two.
While the Aging Eagles Club focuses on the needs of the athletic bands and especially the marching band, the Band Boosters will support all six of the university's bands, McKenzie said.
"This will be a good way for parents to get involved, parents of current members, people that enjoy the concert bands, people that enjoy the marching bands and the concert bands," he said. "They can all get involved."
While Aging Eagles dues are $50 per year, dues for the Band Boosters will be $20. Both groups will receive an electronic newsletter, McKenzie said.
Saturday, the Aging Eagles will host concessions and joining opportunities for both themselves and the Band Boosters at the RAC Pavilion beginning at 3 p.m., with the band to perform a preview show there at 4 p.m.
Under the umbrella of the Music Department and Director of Bands Dr. Robert Dunham, GSU has three concert bands and three athletic bands. McKenzie is associate director of bands, in addition to being the marching band's director. He was marching band assistant director for two years and interim director for one year at Baylor University and finished his doctorate at Michigan State before coming to Georgia Southern.
The basketball pep band, known as the Hoop Troop, and the volleyball pep band, or Net Squad, are each limited to 29 members by NCAA tournament travel regulations.
Six shows
The Southern Pride, however, had 215 members as of mid-August, having grown by three from last year's marching strength, McKenzie said.
"Anytime that there's a director change in an organization, you can anticipate that your numbers are going to take a pretty big hit, so I say ‘only' three more, but I think that that is a very good number at this point," he said.
He also gave a brief overview of this season's shows. Chosen by the band's student leaders, the opening show has a movie theme, including "Circle of Life" from "The Lion King," music from the movies "Inception" and "Pirates of the Caribbean," a piece called "Planet Krypton" from "Superman" and a selection from the 1989 "Batman" movie.
"But it's just one of six shows that we're going to do this year, so if none of that suits your fancy, not to worry," McKenzie said. "Next week, something will be different."
In addition to performing at home games, the band will play at all away games except one, he said. They will miss the Western Carolina game in October to play instead as an exhibition band at a high school competition, which McKenzie said is an important recruiting tool for future members.
Otherwise, the Southern Pride will travel as a pep band to away games, except for the University of Georgia game. McKenzie plans to take the full band, and a show he expects to be especially strong, to Athens.
People wishing to join the Aging Eagles Club can contact its treasurer, Bill Herring, at (404) 245-9993.