SEATTLE — Ten feet from the basketball players looking to advance their teams to the women’s Final Four stood another group of nervous students.
They were huddled in the underbelly of Climate Pledge Arena some 30 minutes before tipoff, their arms slung around one another. They were getting ready to play, too.
“What are we going to do?” Dulce Maria Lara Flores, a senior at the University of Iowa, asked the group around her. “We’re going to dominate,” they responded. They bantered back and forth, their pitch growing until the group was jumping up and down.
“One, two, three, trumpet line!”
Across the country, dozens of collegiate pep bands have followed their classmates as they have competed in the men’s and women’s N.C.A.A. basketball tournaments. While the teams have faced the pressure to survive and advance to the next round, groups of about 30 band members have provided the soundtrack to the games from the stands, just past the sidelines.
With courtside seats and official absence excuse letters for their professors, the band members may just have the best jobs in the tournament.
“It’s an immersive experience for the entire month,” Amy Acklin, the director of the University of Louisville pep band, said in the lobby of the team hotel, just before her band…
