Top 10 things to know about Southern sports

• Advocate staff report
• Published: Jun 14, 2009

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Game day: like no other

At Southern, football is only part of the game-day experience. It’s a barbecue-and-tailgating event, a music festival and family reunion rolled into one long afternoon.

The school’s band, the Human Jukebox, and its dance team, the Dancing Dolls, roll into the stadium before the game, and they don’t stop until long after the final play. The thundering drums and screaming horns can echo through the city for miles.

In the community

Each year, football players and coaches help out with a food drive for needy families around the holidays.

Every student at Southern, let alone a student-athlete, must complete 60 hours of community service before he or she graduates.

Also, the school’s F.G. Clark Activity Center, where the basketball teams play, housed evacuees for months after Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

Home improvement

A construction firm is close to finishing a new complex at the north end of Mumford Stadium.

The facility should be ready in time for football season, and it will include all the modern bells and whistles: coaches’ offices, weight rooms, meeting rooms and, of course, more seats.

The baseball program is also due for an upgrade, with a locker room/office facility beyond the left-field wall at Lee-Hines Field.

Fans in the stands

Football season only lasts 11 or 12 weeks. So if the Jaguars go on the road, their fans follow.