The homecoming halftime show will feature the “Spirit of the Southland” Marching Band, Color Guard and the Lionettes performing the  music of Frank Sinatra. This will be Stoughton’s second homecoming halftime show at the university. Last year’s show featured the music of Louisiana.
File Photo/The Lion’s Roar
 

The “Spirit of the Southland” Marching Band, Color Guard and the Lionettes will bring the memory of Frank Sinatra to the homecoming halftime show.

The homecoming game will start at 4 p.m. on Saturday, Oct. 7. The joint efforts of Interim Director of Band and Director of Athletic Bands Derek Stoughton and Spirit Coordinator Paige Lapeyrouse Hall will prepare the halftime show.

“Frank Sinatra is a legendary performer,” said Stoughton. “What I believe would have been his 100th birthday was a couple years ago, so we wanted to honor that tradition by performing a couple of his great hits, ‘My Way’ and ‘New York, New York.’ It’s also gonna feature our Lionettes dance team, and they do a tremendous job every single week. We’re thrilled and honored to get to work with them each week, so ‘New York, New York’ is gonna feature them.”

Preparation for the show began Monday. Part-time Band Director at Covington High School and Jazz Band Director B.J. Perez III helped with writing the music arrangement for the marching band.

“This happens all the time in marching band where we take a couple of tunes and arrange them, write them out for the marching band,” said Stoughton. “B.J. has done that for us. Sinatra translates very well, especially ‘New York, New York’ because in the original chart the background has got trumpets and trombones going. It translates very well, that style of music to the marching band.”

Stoughton explained how scheduling and other factors influenced the decision to perform the music of Sinatra for homecoming.

“We had our ‘Band Day’ to start off the season,” said Stoughton. “We thought it would be fun to do Disney for the students with them. This week is our Hall of Fame game, so our show has to be a little bit shorter, which is why we’re doing the Shark Week stuff. This has been a favorite show of the Lionettes for a couple years, and homecoming is always a big audience, so we wanted to really feature them in front of as many people as possible. We thought the Sinatra show would be a great way to do that.”

The homecoming show will be Stoughton’s second homecoming show at the university.

“This year, we wanted to feature our Lionettes in front of a large audience because they do such a great job for us,” said Stoughton. “We always try to do something that will either inspire a homecoming crowd or something that is rooted very deeply at Southeastern whether it’s something related to our state, whether it’s something related to some part of our school, something that makes us truly unique and special. These past years, it has been state of Louisiana music along with our Lionettes.”

Stoughton shared his thoughts on homecoming.

“We’re just really excited to welcome all the alumni back to the place where they matriculated,” said Stoughton. “We’re always excited to hear the great and wonderful things that our graduates have done and are doing in the real world. We’re excited to have just been a small part of inspiring them to go out and conquer the world. For them, that all starts here at Southeastern, so we just want to do something to welcome our graduates back, allow them to have a great time this weekend and just continue to be excited and inspired by all the wonderful things going on at our school.”