When they turned in their application, they didn’t even have a name, let alone anything composed. But when they came back from the Percussive Arts Society International Convention (PASIC), an ISU percussion group known as “The Snack Pack Trio” had bagged first prize in an international composition contest.

The trio — Tom Rutkowski, freshman; Nate Newhard, sophomore; and Clint Nieman, junior, all majoring in music — won the college division with a seven-minute-long piece titled “Pudding Cup” at last month’s convention in Columbus, Ohio.

This was the first year that the Small Ensemble category was added to the drumline festival competition and 10 groups competed.

“This is my second year in the society. I went to last year’s competition to watch and kept reading that they introduced this new category,” Rutkowski says. “I talked to Nate the day before the application was due; it was just us and we needed one more person. Clint had some ideas and we worked with him for awhile. Things really just fell together.”

It didn’t take long before they started working on the four different movements in “Pudding Cup.” Newhard and Rutkowski worked on the first and the fourth movements and Nieman came in with ideas about the second and third.

“It took Nate and me a day or two,” Rutkowski says. “Once we had a general idea we were adding stuff up until the day of the performance.”

” ‘Pudding Cup,’ ” Nieman laughs. “We applied on the very last day possible. We didn’t have any music written at that time. It was the first thing that someone came up with.”

Even with classes, they still practiced four to five times a week for the convention.

“We would practice two to three hours a night, as much as we could get in, five times a week,” Nieman says. “It got to be pretty stressful.”

Nieman says this is the first time anyone from Iowa State has won anything at PASIC.

“The actual competition was great. It was one of our best performances,” he says.

As for the piece itself, the first movement is described as mysterious and flowing, and the second starts loud but moves into a warm melodic sound that flows into the third, which is more Latin. The fourth movement Rutkowski describes, loosely, as “notes — a whole lot of notes.” It is the fastest and most challenging movement.

“Part of the fun we had putting this together was that we could write for any variety of instruments. Rather than stick to one thing we decided to incorporate everyone’s strength,” Nieman says.

The three agree they had support from Barry Larkin, associate professor of music and director of percussion activities, and Anne Deane, assistant professor of music. Financial help came from the music service organizations Kappa Kappa Psi and Tau Beta Sigma, the university band department and the Honors program.

As for their plans for next year’s competition: “Next year? I think the three of us kind of smile at each other when we talk about going in as soloists, since we can’t compete in that division until 2004, [but] anything else is open.”