If you’ve ever wondered where hockey band and fan traditions began, look no further than UW Marching Band Director Mike Leckrone.
Leckrone is approaching his 40th year of conducting at UW men’s hockey games and has seen, or plotted, the many traditions that fans now enjoy. What began during the 1969-70 men’s hockey season as then-head coach Bob Johnson asking the band to play at a few games, has evolved into a must have, capable of rousing fans and intimidating competitors.
“I always try to see how visiting people react, it’s always kind of fun to watch,” Leckrone said in reference to the looks of amazement as visitors watch the student section perform dances from such classics as the “Rocky Horror Picture Show” and “The Gong Show.” What really makes a game worthwhile for Leckrone, though, is when the whole crowd is involved in the music. He and marching band members like to view themselves as an integral part of the hockey experience.
During the Coliseum days when seating was general admission, Leckrone said fans would be waiting in their seats 45 minutes before faceoff and begin clapping for the band to start playing immediately. Once hockey moved to the Kohl Center, though, the fans backed off but have since regained their enthusiasm.
“I don’t want to play and have the audience just listen and clap politely. I want them to react and be involved with it,” he said.
Students have varied impressions of the marching band’s role at hockey games. Some, like UW-Madison junior Brett Becker, feel the crowd would be more into the music if the band played “Swingtown.” Others feel the crowd wouldn’t watch the game as much if the band were not playing.
“The band is most involved in hockey because it plays in between plays, in between periods and the crowd is always involved, always moving, and I think that adds a lot to hockey as a sport,” UW-Madison junior Liz Denter said.
For Leckrone, a game is not a game unless you are truly involved in the whole experience.
“To me, if you pay the money and go to a game, you’re not getting everything out of it as a spectator if you don’t get involved,” he said.
One way Leckrone learned to get the crowd more involved is to pull them from their seats himself and make them start dancing between periods. When the band first plays “Jumpin’ at the Woodside,” Leckrone said he likes to find the most distracted and disengaged fans and pull them to their feet.
In his years of directing, Leckrone has personally witnessed the famous water bottle fight against North Dakota, six national championship games, winning the MacNaughton cup, the Kohl Center blackout and Black Sunday. He has made “And Then There’s Maude,” “Jumpin’ at the Woodside,” “Ring of Fire,” “Space Badger,” “Tequila,” “Time Warp” and “You’ve Said It All” staples of every home UW men’s hockey game. But he doesn’t take credit for everything. He said some things were plotted by the band and others were introduced by the students, like “Ring of Fire,” “You’ve Said It All” and “Tequila.”
The band is always looking to add more songs to the mix but cannot take any away for fear of jinxing the outcome.
“It’s become part of the ritual that if you don’t do [it], everyone is going to say ‘Well, you didn’t play ‘Ring of Fire,’ so we lost,’” he said. Leckrone plans to introduce new songs at the Wisconsin/University of Minnesota-Duluth series and hopes to add more traditions to the already lengthy list.
