Free Pitch Perfect: The Quest for Collegiate a Cappella Glory by Mickey Rapkin

Morgan Sword felt so sick that he had his girlfriend drive him to the emergency room. With an IV in one arm and a raging fever, Morgan told the doctor that he absolutely had to get out of the hospital that afternoon.
    “I’ve got a game,” Morgan said.
    “Do you play for UVA?” the doctor asked.
    Morgan replied the only way he knew how: “Sort of?”
    When Morgan was a first year, he was actually accepted to all three all-male a cappella groups. UVA is not known for its music program, and as such, competition for fresh meat is fierce among the a cappella groups. He told the buttoned-up men of the Virginia Gentlemen that he wasn’t interested, that he was deciding between the Academical Village People and the Hullabahoos. Still, one of the Virginia Gentlemen called, offering to take Morgan to dinner. “Morgan, you’re making the biggest mistake of your life,” the kid said. That’s called dirty rush, Morgan explains. The Hullabahoos consider themselves above all that. “We’d rather take the high road,” Morgan says. “We don’t have a single guy in the group who wanted to be somewhere else.” The Hullabahoos are not, however, above shamelessly padding a kid’s ego.
    When the Hullabahoos came back to campus in August 2006, they began planning for auditions. The Hullabahoos were looking to pick up a bass or two. “But more than that,” Morgan says, “we just need good Hullabahoos.” He’s not talking about good singers. “We spend so much time together,” he says, “the first requirement is that we’re gonna get along. We’ve certainly turned down kids before who sang way better than any of us. But if you take them, you’re compromising the integrity of what you’re doing. ” People can contribute in other ways, he says, like looks. You can always teach a cool kid to beatbox.
    Turnout was solid for the first round of auditions this year— and fairly standard, save for one curveball: An openly gay member of the Hullabahoos watched his ex-boyfriend audition for the group. Now, the Hullabahoos are very welcoming—especially considering their relation to the Mason-Dixon Line. But most everyone was relieved that the kid’s sound wasn’t right for the Hullabahoos. Even if it had been, they admit, they probably wouldn’t have taken him. “Hullabahoos hooking up with other Hullabahoos?” one member says. “We just can’t have that.”
    To get to know the potential new members better before the callbacks, Morgan and the B’hoos resurrected an old tradition, the Hullabahoos-versus-Auditionees football game. The Hullabahoos have a strategy. “We dominate early,” says Joe Cassara, the current president of the B’hoos, “but we let the kids win so we don’t look like assholes.” The Hullabahoos even throw interceptions to kids who are on the fence—kids who are auditioning for other a cappella groups. The game isn’t about athletics. (Which explains why Pete, the music director, runs the field with a can of beer in his hand.) “It’s about seeing who is a leader,” Morgan says.
    In the past four years, the Hullabahoos have lost just one kid—an honest-to-God cousin of President George W. Bush, a kid named Sam Bush. Perhaps lost is the wrong word. At the auditions, the Hullabahoos ask each kid to fill out a form, which lists their hometown, major, voice part, that sort of thing. There are a few personality-based questions too. Example: Fill in the blank. I have the most extraordinary _______. Sam Bush wrote cock . He would go on to join—and quit—the Virginia Gentlemen.
    Not much was memorable about the callbacks this fall—save for Joe Whitney, a six-foot-something stringbean with blue eyes and a goofy grin, a guy whose friends regularly describe him as the whitest guy they know. For callbacks, each kid is asked to prepare five minutes of entertainment. For his talent, Joe Whitney showed up pushing a microwave on a handcart. “What’s that for?” Morgan asked, though he was pretty