DENTON, Texas — Even though there’s plenty of green on the University of North Texas campus, some students say they need to be pinched.
“Yeah, I had to pinch myself, just to see if this was real,” said senior Matthew Garcia.
“This is really a thing that’s happening that I get the chance to do,” junior Tyler Hudson asked.
Garcia and Hudson are both members of the UNT Green Brigade marching band. What’s so hard for them to believe is that on Thursday they’ll be marching in the St. Patrick’s Day parade in Dublin, Ireland.
“We’re going on like the meanest, greenest of all holidays,” Hudson said.
“I thought that was convenient,” director of athletic bands Daniel Cook said. “The Green Brigade going to Ireland on St. Patrick’s Day. You can’t get more convenient than that.”
Cook said the trip is especially meaningful to a lot of students who have never traveled abroad, but it’s even more meaningful for the program. This is the Green Brigade’s first international trip since the 1970s.
Cook told WFAA the band has built a pretty good reputation here at home, but playing in Ireland is a chance to show the rest of the world just how good they are.
“I hope it adds to the prestige, the recognition, and the overall clout of the group and I certainly think it will,” Cook said.
He said something like this can only strengthen the band’s popularity and its performance. For the students, however, the greatest part of the trip has nothing to do with music.
“We’re not going to remember the wrong notes we played,” senior Amrutha Murthy said. “We’re not going to remember the times we had really bad, or good, rehearsals. But in the end we’re just going to remember the fun times we had, the trips we took and the good music we played along the way.”
“That just feels so cool and just a once in a lifetime opportunity to get to have,” Hudson said.
Even though they’ll be wearing green, they say go ahead and pinch because they’re clearly dreaming.