At Kentucky, the ‘Call to the Post’ lets Wildcat fans and players know it’s game time
In the minutes before one of the most anticipated Kentucky football games at Kroger Field this season — a primetime Saturday night matchup in early October against LSU — a sold-out crowd fell silent.
Junior Nate Stombaugh, a third-year member of the Wildcat Marching Band, took his position in the corner of an end zone in front of the UK student section, lifted his trumpet to his lips and helped send 61,690 people from a hush into a hysteria.
Stombaugh and some of his fellow trumpet players in the Wildcat Marching Band play an integral part in the athletic game-day experience at UK by playing “Call to the Post” before home games.
The song has origins in the military as a signal for military personnel to get ready, but it’s also widely known for being performed at racetracks dating back to the 1860s, alerting people that the next race will start in about 10 minutes.
At UK sporting events, the purpose is much the same.
“Call to the Post” is performed prior to home football games, men’s and women’s basketball games and volleyball matches at UK.
Before football games, the song is performed by a trumpet player from the Wildcat Marching Band immediately after the marching band’s pregame show on the field. This performer of “Call to the Post” is chosen by band staff after an audition process, according to Shayna Stahl, who is in her first year at UK as the director of athletic bands and the assistant director of bands.
Stahl said performing “Call to the Post” before home football games has been a tradition at Kentucky for more than 25 years.
Three members of the Wildcat Marching Band who have performed “Call to the Post” prior to home football games this season are Karl Oswald, Tess Wampler and Stombaugh.
Oswald is in his first year with the marching band and is a trumpet minor at UK. As an out-of-state student from Missouri, he said he didn’t know about any game-day traditions related to the marching band or the role that he would play in the game-day experience for so many people.
“It’s been a really fun learning experience to get to know the culture and history of Kentucky through the lens of that musical side of things,” Oswald said.
Wampler is also in her first year in the marching band and is a trumpet performance major at Kentucky. Wampler has lived in Lexington her whole life and attended Lafayette High School in the city, but had never been to a UK home football game prior to this season.
She had no idea that playing “Call to the Post” before games was an option, but said she wanted to get as many playing opportunities as possible and wasn’t about to pass this one up.
Wampler said her father works with horses and has his own racing syndicate, so being able to perform the song carries special meaning for her family.
“It’s a really crazy experience, it’s like the one part of the game where it is just completely silent in the stands,” Wampler said. “Whenever the whole student section starts cheering you’re like, ‘Wow, I really did that.’ It’s a really amazing feeling.”
Stombaugh is a junior at UK and is a music education major who is now in his third year as part of the Wildcat Marching Band. He’s a section leader this year for the trumpet section, and performed his first “Call to the Post” in November 2019 before a UK men’s basketball home game at Rupp Arena against Evansville.
“If you remember what happened there, that is not a fond memory for me personally. ... I played ‘Call to the Post,’ I nailed it and did it really well, then that basketball game happens and we lost,” Stombaugh said, referencing Kentucky’s stunning 67-64 home loss to the Purple Aces two years ago.
Performance anxiety
This season at Kroger Field, UK is 5-1 with one home game left on Saturday against New Mexico State, a game in which Kentucky is favored by 36 points.
This stellar home record includes a 42-21 victory over LSU that followed Stombaugh’s “Call to the Post” performance.
“The crowd was so loud that week. I have a friend who works production and he had a decibel meter with him and he read it at 104 decibels on the field from the crowd noise,” Stombaugh said of the LSU game.
When it comes to the actual playing of “Call to the Post,” Stombaugh said the song itself isn’t difficult to play, but the real work comes in being focused while playing in front of such a large crowd.
Like anything that needs to be done in front of 60,000 or more people — whether it’s playing the trumpet or running a post route — developing muscle memory and practicing to become comfortable is essential, something that is stressed to students by UK trumpet professor Jason Dovel.
“One of the best ways to quickly get over performance anxiety is just know what you’re going to do, know your stuff,” Stombaugh said. “I might chip one note here or there, but I know I can go up here and not yuck it up completely ... really, it sounds harsh, but at some point you just got to get over it and just do it.”
Stombaugh said one of the reasons he develops a “tunnel vision” when performing the song before football games is because the speakers at Kroger Field are about 150 yards away from where he stands on the field.
This causes about a two-second delay between when a note is played and when it’s heard from the speakers.
“I almost thought of it as like blinders on a horse,” Wampler said of how she stays focused. “I just like put my blinders on and just focus on that mike right there.”
One of the distinct elements of “Call to the Post” is that it doesn’t use any of the trumpet valves, so all the notes are played on open partials.
“You’ve got to hit all the pitches purely by manipulating your air, but the other aspect of it is double tonguing ... for some trumpet players, myself included, it’s actually fairly difficult just because of the way the anatomy of my tongue is,” Stombaugh explained. “Most good, solid high school trumpet players should be able to, at the very least, do basic double tonguing and most college trumpet players should be able to do it ... it’s not like some mind-boggling technique.”
“The hardest part of it has to be the individuality of it,” Oswald said of performing “Call to the Post.” “Everybody understands it, and does it a slightly little bit different. So for me, learning it was a completely different process than what (Stombaugh) probably had to go through.”
Some of the prevailing emotions experienced by Oswald, Stombaugh and Wampler when performing “Call to the Post” are adrenaline and fear.
It can be disorienting at times, but the mixture always results in exultation at the song’s conclusion.
“It’s just a really good, satisfying feeling to know, ‘Hey, I just did it. I stepped out there and I did it. It’s done now,’” Oswald said. “That’s what it felt like for me after that very first one. A little bit of relief, a little bit of excitement that, ‘Hey, I pulled that off. They’re cheering because I did that.’”
“If we’re being honest, that’s probably the largest audience that any one of us has ever solo performed for,” Stombaugh added. “There’s not many other places you can perform for 60,000 people right on your own, so it’s really a cool experience to do it.”
This story was originally published November 18, 2021 at 10:29 AM.
