Pride of Acadiana
| The Pride of Acadiana | |
|---|---|
| School | University of Louisiana at Lafayette |
| Location | Lafayette, Louisiana |
| Conference | Sun Belt Conference |
| Director | Eric Melley |
| Members | 263 in 2014 |
| Website | www |
The Pride of Acadiana is the marching band at the University of Louisiana. The band plays pregame and halftime shows for all home games of the Louisiana Ragin' Cajuns football team.
The band has given the Ragin' Cajuns an unofficial second fight song, Respect, as made famous by Aretha Franklin, by playing the song at every football game since the 1980s.
The band performed at Governor Kathleen Blanco's inauguration in 2004. It also traveled to New York, New York to perform in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade in 2005. During spring break in 2009, the band traveled to the United Kingdom to perform. They held performances at Princes Street Gardens in Edinburgh, Scotland, and at Victoria Embankment Gardens in the City of Westminster in London, England and recently in 2010 performed in Madrid, Spain as part of the annual Three King's Parade and was the first American marching band to appear on national Spanish television. The Pride has recently been invited to return to the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade in 2012 to represent the Cajuns once again making them only a handful of college marching bands to ever be invited back.
The Pride of Acadiana performs a pregame show before the games. The band will start behind the student section of Cajun Field, marching around three sides of the stadium until it gets to the main entrance. There it will perform a pep rally with the help of the cheerleaders. It'll then start playing "Do What Ya Wanna" as it turns and heads into the stadium. The band then files out and down into the tunnel, where the members line up for the pregame field show. For 2013, the band begins pregame by peak stepping out of the tunnel and onto the field at a quick tempo to a drum cadence. Then, they perform short snippets of Aretha Franklin's "Respect" (the Respect Fanfare) before marching down the field to the Louisiana Fight Song, eventually forming a large "UL." The band then performs the Alma Mater and the Star Spangled Banner. Afterwards, the band performs the songs "Jambalaya" and "You Are My Sunshine" forming a large fleur de lis, as the world's largest Louisiana flag is displayed. Then, after forming a "tunnel," the band plays the Louisiana Fight Song once again as the team enters the field. Afterwards, the band plays "Respect off the field", where they play "Respect" while marching to the away side of the field and gathering by the band's section in the stands.
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