When you picture of a typical college student’s part-time job, you may think of a server at a restaurant, a cashier at a clothing store or a barista at a coffee shop. Ben Zarnstorff’s part-time job skews outside of the norm.

Zarnstorff is a tenor drummer for the Milwaukee Bucks Beats Drumline, the drumline that plays at Bucks games during the timeouts, in between quarters, in the stands or during the halftime show. “I never thought that I would be doing one of the things I love most in front of thousands of people as a part-time job,” said Zarnstorff.

Zarnstorff is a freshman mechanical engineering student. He decided to attend MSOE early in his senior year of high school after instantly feeling like home at a small school in a big city. After committing to MSOE, his high school teacher encouraged him to try out for the Bucks Beats Drumline.

“My high school drumline instructor played in the Bucks Beats Drumline for a few years. He gave me some of their sheet music to practice over summer and I auditioned the first week of classes at MSOE. The audition went super well, was a ton of fun, and I got in!”

Like many students, balancing school and work is one of the biggest challenges for Zarnstorff. “If we have new music to learn for a court performance at a game, we usually get the music about a week beforehand, so we have to be able to learn and memorize the music pretty fast. This can be stressful when I have a lot of schoolwork to do as well.”

In the end, after weekly rehearsals and dedicating time to practicing at home, all the hard work pays off when the drumline gets to perform for fans at the Fiserv Forum. 

“My favorite part about being a part of this group is without a doubt performing on the court at games. Putting in hours of work to create an awesome show and going out there and giving it everything we’ve got is such a great feeling. The energy is always so unreal. It’s still unbelievable and I’m so thankful to have received this opportunity,” said Zarnstorff.

Zarnstorff encourages everyone to attend a Bucks game at the Fiserv Forum, even if the Bucks Beats Drumline isn’t performing, to catch the Bucks during their successful season, enjoy the other performers and take in the amazing new facility.