Fight songs add pep, pride to game night

High school fight songs are meant to excite fans and motivate football players with catchy lyrics and peppy, upbeat melodies.

In many cases, those melodies are familiar because they were borrowed from fight songs that have been around for decades.

Sheffield High School Band Director Eric Kirkman said it's not uncommon for high schools to borrow college fight songs and add their own school-specific lyrics.

Kirkman said a fight song "establishes a level of excitement with different melodic elements."

When Bradshaw and Coffee high schools in Florence were combined into Florence High School, their familiar yet separate motifs of orange and brown and black and yellow were replaced by the new school's silver and blue.

The fight songs of the two schools also were retired so the new school could form its own identity with new school colors, alma mater and fight song.

Becky Foster, who writes and arranges music and is a former band director, was the Bradshaw High School uniform chairman when she agreed to create a fight song for the new high school in 2004.

"The students came up with a series of words they thought to be representative of the school that they would like to hear in a fight sing," Foster said.

Words such as "victory," "falcons" and the school's colors were incorporated into the new fight song.

Foster said she took the words and created five different versions of the fight song before settling on one to present to the school. Foster also wrote the band and choral arrangements for the new fight song.

Fight songs are commonly played when the team runs out onto the field before the game, after a big play and especially after a touchdown.

Their lyrics have to be short and relatively simple so they can be easily memorized by students, Foster said.

Some fight songs, including the one played by the Muscle Shoals High School marching band, have no lyrics.

The Muscle Shoals music was written by the late Charles Stratford, who started the high school's band program and was its first director.

"The best I can tell, he was inspired by the music from 'The Vikings,' " said Pat Stegall, Stratford's son-in-law and Muscle Shoals band director. "If you listen to our fight song, you'll hear little snippets of 'The Vikings.' He turned it into a march."

"The Vikings" is a 1958 movie starring Kirk Douglas, Tony Curtis and Earnest

Borgnine.

Stegall said his father-in-law had toyed with the idea of revamping the fight song but never got around to it. He said it's not uncommon for a high school fight song to be instrumental, and he has no plans to push for lyrics.

His wife, Mary Ann, principal of Muscle Shoals Middle School, could be heard in the background saying "I don't think he'd mind if Pat Stegall wrote words to the song," in reference to her late father.

Pat Stegall said the band has recently added "Tribute to Troy," a tune frequently heard during University of Southern California football games as a complement to the school's fight song.

Kirkman, who spent some time in the former Coffee High School band department, said the fight songs of the University of Notre Dame and University of Michigan are commonly borrowed by other schools.

Lloyd Jones, band director for the University of North Alabama, said UNA's fight song was based on one of three songs called "Three School Songs" published nationally in the 1960s.

"It wasn't written for this school," Jones said. "Whoever was the director in the late '60s picked this fight song."

Words to "The UNA Fight Song" were written by band students during the late 1970s, Jones said.

The cheer in the middle also was written by band students.

"A good fight song should have a lot of spirit to it," said Florence High School Band Director John Bradley. "It's got to be peppy. It's got to get the fans excited and motivate the players as well."

Russ Corey can be reached at 740-5738 or russ.corey@TimesDaily.com.