Icons of Trojan pride unite to promote the Fight-On spirit

As USC prepared to ramp up in-person activities and welcome students back to campus at the start of the fall 2021 semester, the Trojan family was still reeling from more than a year of pandemic-related closures, online commencements and Zoom classes.

In that moment, Monique S. Allard, USC’s vice president for student life, and newly hired USC Trojan Marching Band director Jacob Vogel saw an opportunity for the university’s five ambassadors of school spirit – the Trojan Marching Band, the USC Spirit Leaders, the USC Song Leaders, the Tommy Trojan mascots and Travelers – unite to reignite the Fight On spirit on campus.

To that end, the team renamed “The Spirit of Troy” — a nickname usually reserved for the Trojan Marching Band — to include all five spirit groups.

“It was at a time when the university was looking to us to re-engage them in the fight and remind them what a sense of normalcy was before the pandemic,” Vogel said.

Vogel took over leadership of the Trojan Marching Band in early 2021 after serving as assistant director and arranger for four years. Since then, Vogel’s position has evolved to include leadership of all USC spirits groups.

After hiring Vogel, Allard and her team discussed how to further improve and invest in the university’s spirit programs. They hired Nicole Martin as assistant director of spiritual programs to support and focus the groups’ collective energy.

“This is a real opportunity for teams to be more organized and more supportive of students,” she said. “These changes may not be easy to see for many, but I am sure they will be felt by all student participants.”

The Spirit of Troy: Breaking Silos

Although the five spirit programs frequently worked together to support university events in the years prior to joining under the umbrella of The Spirit of Troy, the groups operated in isolation. Some – including the Spirit Leaders, the Song Leaders and Travelers – were organized under USC Recreational Sports, while the Trojan Marching Band operated independently.

When Vogel took on the role of associate band director in 2016, he immediately noticed the disjointed relationship between the five arms of the university’s spirit team. When he became band director, he saw firsthand how this lack of cohesion led to complications as he and his team coordinated travel and accommodations for off-campus ghost group performances.

“We had all these great players, but we didn’t function as a team,” Vogel said.

He advocated placing the spirit teams under the direction of the Trojan Marching Band, not only to improve collaboration, but also to combine forces to lift the spirits of a student body that had experienced missed graduations and college commencements – and the School had founded year of their laptops.

Together with Martin, Allard and the Office of Student Life team, song advisor Audrea Harris and spirits advisor Bria Biggs, Vogel has built a complete administrative structure to support the collaborative efforts of the staff and students involved in the spirits programs Troy with Trojans fans around the world.

“They are just iconic figures of what it means to be a Trojan and the Trojan spirit,” Allard said. “The impact is far-reaching – every member truly appreciates the opportunity to be part of something so special.”

A more integrative and holistic approach

Although the Trojan Marching Band’s initial formation consisted primarily of music students, today the largest spirits group on campus includes more than 300 students from almost all majors. By bringing spirit groups together, the possibilities for a greater diversity of experiences and perspectives are endless, Allard said.

While Vogel highlights that USC Recreational Sports has done a great job managing the Spirit and Song programs, he argues that having the two groups under the banner of “The Spirit of Troy” provides a more holistic approach to the artistic collaboration possible.

“When you bring people with different artistic experiences together in one room, it changes the perspective of meetings,” he said. “It changes our priorities when supporting athletics and collegiate events.”

Vogel said this continued evolution is the strength behind the rebranding of the spirits teams.

“With every interaction, every appearance, every meeting, every game, we have a new opportunity to get to know ourselves better as an organization and to develop further,” he said. “To be better for our students.”

This diversity of artistic backgrounds has also changed the way students participate in the various spirit groups. According to Vogel and Martin, it has become more common for students to move from one ghost team to another as they better understand their own skills, interests and ambitions.

For example, several members of the current Spirit Leaders came from the Trojan Marching Band. “I don’t think they would have known or felt confident about auditioning for this process if they hadn’t had contact with the team through working with Spirit of Troy,” Martin said.

Last year also saw the evolution of the song team from Song Girls to Song Leaders, a change that Vogel said better reflected the program as a whole. The team had previously used the Song Leaders moniker; Vogel explained that during this transitional period of unity and cohesion, it makes sense to return to a name more similar to that of the Spirit Leaders, a group with which they are often associated.

The beginning of a new era of competition – and Trojan pride

“At the heart of all of our work is creating a truly positive experience and environment for all students,” Allard said, adding that enhancing Spirit programs is an opportunity to impact the entire student body. “All of our teams are made up of USC students. We want everyone to have a positive and transformative experience while participating in the Spirit programs that not only stays with them for the rest of their lives, but also influences the way they represent and promote university spirit overall.”

Reflecting on how The Spirit of Troy helped lead USC to its new position in the Big Ten Conference, Allard says the future is unlimited. “Building on the decades of incredible success in our history, we look forward to all we can build at the new conference in the decades to come,” she said. “It’s just a really exciting time.”

Vogel agrees. “Not only are we exploring new avenues of creativity within our organization, but joining the Big Ten Conference has opened our eyes to the different performance practices of our conference peers,” he said. “I’m sure they share that sentiment as we continue to bring the spirit of Troy to our new colleagues’ storied venues across the country.”