Posing during rehersal were, from left, Tom LaSalle, Stan Freese, Tony Dungy, Dennis Schulstad, and UMAA CEO Margaret Carlson.

After a dinner for more than 2,100 and a short UMAA program including a year-in-review video, outgoing volunteer national president Dennis Schulstad (’67), introduced Freese, now talent casting and booking director for Walt Disney Productions. As a U student, Freese was a tuba sensation, and was featured performer on the University band’s landmark tour of the former Soviet Union in 1968 at the request of the U.S. Department of State. He returned to tour with the band, and legendary conductor Frank Bencriscutto, in 1980 on another groundbreaking trip, this time to China. Freese has been with Disney for 35 years.

Freese conducted about 50 members of the Minnesota Marching Band (“these are the one we could convince to blow off finals,” he quipped) in a few rousing Minnesota band standards. He then talked about

The alumni band entertained outside Mariucci Arena on a beautiful evening.

TCF Bank Stadium, now getting underway across Huron Boulevard from Mariucci. The stadium will become home for the 300-member band and will provide the storage, rehearsal, and other space they need. He pointed out that the performance at the celebration was the 115^th of the school year for the band, and that each band member put in more than 500 hours of performing and rehearsal time in 2006-07.

Freese then performed parts of a famed trumpet solo, Carnival in Venice, including a stretch that was meant to be played by two instruments, but he managed to play both parts simultaneously, on a tuba. The rousing and crowd pleasing performance concluded with—what else?—the Minnesota Rouser.

Dungy then took the stage. He noted that since winning the Super Bowl in early February, he had been inundated with requests to speak. He thanked Schulstad for asking him to speak a year ago, “before I became famous.”

The former Gopher and NFL quarterback later discussed the place of athletics in an institution like Minnesota. Excellent athletics teams and the new on-campus stadium, can bring “positive energy”

Stan Freese with members of the Minnesota Marching Band.

and attention to a school, and enhance “the whole quality of [campus] life.”

A Michigan native, Dungy told the story of coming to the U campus on a recruiting visit, primarily because he would have a chance to see his favorite team, Michigan State, play the Gophers in basketball. (Dungy would also play on the Gopher basketball team.) But the electric atmosphere in a packed Williams Arena (“This was before the fire marshall got a look at what was really going on,” he joked.) began changing his mind. The people he met on the visit convinced him to become a Gopher. Without the education he received from his coaches and his professors in what is now the Carlson School of Management, “I know I would not be the coach of the Super Bowl champions in 2007,” Dungy said.

But he feels the impact of that winter night in Williams Arena goes beyond just his own life. Dungy’s experience at Minnesota helped convince his younger brother, Linden, to attend dental school at the U. Linden now runs Immanuel

Tony Dungy

Dental in Farmington. “I happen to think that [athletics] pays off in a lot of ways, and I, for one, am very grateful to the University of Minnesota because it paid off for me.”

The event concluded with the awarding of Outstanding Achievement Awards to both Dungy and Freese. The OAA is the highest honor for alumni accomplishments and recipients have their names engraved on the Alumni Wall of Honor on the Gateway Plaza.

During the business portion of the event, Schulstad ceremonially passed the gavel to Tom LaSalle (’72), the incoming national volunteer president. Other members of the incoming executive committee are president-elect Bruce Mooty (’77, ’80, ’83);  first vice president Archie Givens (’66); vice presidents  Jessica Phillips (’97, ’03), Maureen Reed (’71, ’74) and Ertugrul Tuzcu (’78); secretary-treasurer  Kent Horsager (’84, ’86). Schulstad will become past president when the new officers are installed July 1.