The Penn Band wins a Women's Lacrosse game

For those of you that don't know, in addition to playing euphonium in the band, I also cover Penn sports teams for the Daily Pennsylvanian, Penn's student newspaper. I've yet to cover either football or men's basketball, as these sports are normally reserved for juniors and seniors to cover. However, the biggest sport that I've covered over my two years has been the women's lacrosse team.

Now, once the men's basketball season comes to a close, the Penn Band normally goes into hibernation mode. Well not quite. We do a few scattered spring events here and there. And so far this year we've done two women's lacrosse games. Now, I've had to cover both of these games for the DP, so I haven't played with the band. Doing so would constitute a direct conflict of interest, since I'd be rooting for a team (by playing an instrument) and then covering said team for an objective media source.

However, a much iffier issue of conflict of interest occurred after the most recent Penn Band-attended women's lacrosse game. Yesterday, the No. 5 Quakers faced No. 1 Northwestern who was undefeated and on a 36-game winning streak. The Wildcats also had won the last three national championships. It was a huge game, so the band decided to come out and support the team.

Well the Quakers pulled off the stunning upset. (Here are my live game updates of the match; notice the Penn Band references). Anyway, after the game I was waiting to interview some players/coaches. Penn senior captain Rachel Manson, whom I've interviewed several times before and knows me by sight, turns to me completely out of the blue and says, "Because the Penn Band came." Since it seemed sort of off the record I asked her to state it for the record. So she repeated herself, "Because the Penn Band came we won today." I was sort of in shock she said that, but what a quote.
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Now here's where the conflict of interest comes into play. To give some background, the last time the Penn Band came to a women's lacrosse game was the Wednesday April 2 game against Johns Hopkins. I wrote the preview for that game, and I interviewed Manson for it. Being the idiot that I was, I told her that the Penn Band was coming and then asked her what her thoughts were. She was pretty impressed and said she remembered the band coming the previous year for the Princeton game in which the Quakers clinched the Ivy title and how it made that game really special. After the interview I told her I was in the band and that I'd probably play with them (eventually I didn't since no one else could cover the game for the DP).

I wanted to run her quotes about the Band, but my editors wouldn't let me since they said it was a conflict of interest since I had brought it up myself, and she responded to my theoretically biased question. Now I didn't really argue that too much, and retrospectively it makes sense.

Flash forward to yesterday. Before I even wrote my story I went up to my editor and explained the situation with Manson's most recent pro-Penn Band quote. However, he disallowed it yet again, saying even though she was completely unprompted to mention the band, she still knew that I was in the band and that potentially skewered her quote.

I didn't quite understand this logic since the previous time he had told me it couldn't run because I had brought up the band on my own. But then again, he has the final say, so I declined to write it in.

I also wrote an email on the band's list serve asking the journalists of the band whether they thought there was a conflict of interest. A band alum who works at a national media outlet yet wanted anonymity agreed with my editor that this might appear to be a conflict of interest since I am a member of the band. So if a professional journalist agrees, that's enough for me.

But even if it didn't make it to print, it's still true that at least one women's lacrosse player thinks we're the reason they earned potentially the biggest win in program history.

But it gets even better. At the time Manson said it, I thought maybe she was joking, or just reacting instinctively, something temporal. But last night after I sent her a facebook comment congratulating her on the win, she responded by reiterating her comment about the band: "I'm telling you on the record it is all because of the Penn Band," she wrote.

Moral of the story: The Band, despite all the s*** it can get sometimes from various sources, is still appreciated by athletes. And that's what matters in the end.

NB: Thanks to Brian for catching the mistakes up to the --- line. But I'm sure there's still some out there! Who wants more nickels!