With the increasing number of members bolstering the band’s ranks, an opportunity for a special pregame entrance presented itself.

Instead of entering from the endzone at the open end of the stadium, the body would be split into two groups with one entering from the closed end as well.

“Apparently the two side thing has been done before,” Dewitz said during the morning practices. “But the biggest difficulty will be keeping the musicians in beat. We’ll have to try it with instruments and see how it goes.”

Those concerns did not manifest themselves during the actual performance, as the band nailed the entrance.

“It was really great,” Dewitz said. “I was a bit concerned after rehearsal, but the two sides seemed to be together. I think any deviance was just in the echo.”

With the first major hurdle cleared, the focus shifted to the special 85th anniversary halftime show.

“Every week we plan a halftime show, but this one took two weeks to plan,” Katcher said. “The Drill Master [Rosensweig] is in charge of taking ideas and coming up with something fun from those.”

This week’s theme would take a look back to the predictions of the Harvard University Band, as the members scrambled all over the field into different formations such as an “85” or a big “H,” while performing such songs as “The Stars and Stripes Forever.”

“It’s crazy conducting for so many people,” Rissmiller said. “I’m used to a much smaller group, but it’s a once and a lifetime opportunity to get to do this.”

But even after the successful halftime show was completed, the band’s traditions weren’t quite complete.

With 10:30 to go in the fourth quarter, the group released little squares of paper torn from programs and halftime marching orders to the shout of “Confetti”—much to the dismay of those fans seated downwind in sections 33 and 34.

As the final knee was taken to close out the Crimson’s 34-24 victory over Cornell, the band once again broke into its beloved anthem—Ten Thousand Men of Harvard.

Soon after, the band once again took to marching, as it crossed the bridge back into Cambridge, leaving Harvard Stadium and Greater Boston in its wake. The indelible image that the group had left on the day’s events would not soon be forgotten by any of the students or alumni lucky enough to return for the weekend of time warps and reverie. As the tune of Fight Fiercely began to fade, one thing still remained clear.

The band was back together.

—Staff writer Michael R. James can be reached at mrjames@fas.harvard.edu.