Threes Above High’s 2025 Halloween celebration. Credit: Courtesy of Scott Ellsworth.
Eight campus a cappella groups will gather at Threes Above High, located at 2203 N. High St., at 7:30 p.m. Thursday to compete in a “Pitch Perfect”-inspired “riff-off” and recreate the iconic film scene.
Ohio State of Mind, Scarlet & Grace Notes, Buck That!, Meshuganotes, OSU Dhadkan, Scarlet Fever, Majors & Minors and Sound of Science a cappella groups will collaborate to host their annual Aca-tober event for those ages 18 and over, according to the Instagram post.?
“Since most of the groups going are competitive, it’s kind of how we show everyone what we’ve been working on so far,” said Molly McCafferty, a fourth-year in political science and public management, leadership and policy and president of Majors & Minors. “It’s a fun performance before we compete [in the International Championship of Collegiate A Cappella] in February.”?
Threes Above High will also be hosting Halloween-themed festivities throughout the evening, including costume contests where attendees will have the chance to win free Super Lytes, Pink Whitney pails, Jack Daniel’s Tennessee Fire or the ability to skip the line, along with up to five friends, at Threes for a year, according to an Instagram post.?
“We’re really looking forward to bringing all the a cappella groups together for a great event,” said Scott Ellsworth, owner of Threes Above High, in an Instagram direct message. “There are so many talented people on this campus, and we’re happy to give them a place to show off those talents. It should be a really fun night, and we can’t wait to see what everyone brings to the stage!”
McCafferty said the campus a cappella groups will work together to recreate the “riff-off” scene from “Pitch Perfect” line by line, and each group will perform a separate segment from the original movie scene.
“People just kind of picked parts, and it split up pretty well,” McCafferty said.?
This will be the first year that the Acac-tober event will be held at Threes Above High, said Zac Hillwig, a second-year in city and regional planning and a music director for Scarlet Fever.?
“In the past, we’ve always had this on campus, so it’s really exciting to do this off campus at a fun venue like Three’s,” Hillwig said.
McCafferty said that, in addition to the “riff-off,” each group will also perform two songs of their choosing.
Hillwig said Scarlet Fever introduced a practice routine for the event into its normal rehearsal schedule.?
“Starting earlier this month, I think we started to work on the ‘riff-off,’” Hillwig said. “At [an Oct. 25] rehearsal, we were able to get all of the groups together at the end in Timashev [Family Music Building], or Weigel [Hall], and so that kind of allowed us to rehearse this with all of the groups for the ‘riff-off,’ similar to how we did it last year — getting all the groups together just to run it at least once or twice to make sure everything’s going smoothly before the actual event.”
The Aca-tober event also serves as a bonding experience for members of each group, McCafferty said.
“I have a lot of friends within other groups, so it’s always a fun thing for me to see other friends and all the work they put into it in the past couple months to learn their songs,” McCafferty said. “It’s cool to see what people do and like how they arrange songs.”
Threes Above High continues to seek out opportunities to support Ohio State students through student organization-focused events, Ellsworth said.?
“It’s really important to us to be involved in this great campus community,” Ellsworth said. “There are so many awesome organizations at Ohio State, and we’re always happy to support as many of them as we can.”
The event also allows members of Ohio State’s a cappella groups to embrace their community, McCafferty said.
“I feel like it really allows us all to communicate more,” McCafferty said. “We have a group chat where the [executive] board members of each group communicate, but it’s a lot better to actually see each other’s faces and see other members of the group who aren’t necessarily on the [executive] board. It kind of shows you how big our community is.”
Hillwig echoed this thought and said it is rare for all of the campus a cappella groups to have an opportunity to gather in this way.?
“We opened for Majors & Minors, another group on campus, for their fall concert,” Hillwig said. “We get invited to some of Buck That! and Scarlet & Grace Notes’ events, but this is kind of the only thing that gets all of the groups on campus together, so that’s definitely been a really fun thing to have everyone in one place.”?
A winner from Threes Above High’s 2025 Halloween costume contest. Credit: Courtesy of Scott Ellsworth.
The a cappella groups will also be playing into the Halloween-inspired themes of the weekend, Hillwig said, by wearing their costumes for the performance.
“I think a lot of people maybe don’t know that much about a cappella or wouldn’t necessarily normally be inclined to go to an event,” Hillwig said. “But I think it’s [at] a pretty convenient location, and it’ll be fun for people because they can kind of just build that into their night out.”?
For Threes Above High’s costume contest, workers will nominate attendees for Best Individual Costume, Best Couples Costume and Best Group Costume, for which a winner will be chosen based on an audience cheer-off, and a staff pick will be selected, Ellsworth said.?
“We love seeing people get creative and really have fun with their costumes,” Ellsworth said. “Every year, we try to partner with a few different brands to put together some really cool prizes. We love being able to give someone something they can enjoy for an entire year instead of just a one-time prize.”
The Aca-tober event is free to attend and will begin at Threes Above High at 7:30 p.m. Thursday.
