Thomasville High Band Picks ’90s Boy Band Theme for 2026

The 2026 halftime show of the Thomasville High School Mighty Tiger Marching Band will feature a tribute to the boy bands of the 1990s, with a particular nod to the Backstreet Boys. The theme puts one of pop music’s most recognizable catalogs in front of Friday-night crowds in Thomasville, where the marching band’s halftime performances are a fixture of the fall schedule.

Fans will likely see the complete show after a few weeks of the regular season, THS band director James Boyett said. Marching shows typically debut in sections — a pregame or first movement at the season opener, with drills, guard work and additions layered in week by week as students memorize music and field positions. The full production usually lands by mid-season, in time for the heart of the competition calendar.

The marching band held a successful camp in late July, and the students made considerable progress, Boyett said. Band camp — the stretch of long days before school starts when members learn music, drill and basics — sets the tone for the entire season, and a productive camp gives a small program a running start on the season’s demands.

The song list

The halftime show will feature three Backstreet Boys songs — “Everybody,” “Larger Than Life” and “I Want It That Way” — and will close with “Bye Bye Bye” by NSYNC. The selection spans the era’s two dominant groups, pairing the driving electronic pulse of “Everybody” and the arena-scale “Larger Than Life” with “I Want It That Way,” the 1999 ballad that remains one of the decade’s defining singles, before handing the finale to NSYNC’s signature hit.

Boyett noted the song selection is designed to highlight the work of the trombone and trumpet players. Brass-driven arrangements are a natural fit for boy band pop — the songs’ melodic hooks translate cleanly to horn lines, and a featured brass section gives the show’s musical weight to the students carrying it. For a band with growing numbers, programming that spotlights a section can also sharpen rehearsal focus, since the featured players set the standard everyone else follows.

The 1990s theme also bridges generations in the stands. Parents and grandparents in Thomasville grew up with these songs, which means a halftime show built on them draws a reaction from adults as reliably as from students — a practical consideration for a program whose audience is the whole town on a Friday night.

The 2026 Mighty Tiger band

The band includes 38 students, 25 of them musicians, an increase from recent numbers. For a program of Thomasville’s size, growth of that kind matters: every additional musician strengthens the sound, every additional member widens the talent pool for leadership roles, and an upward trend signals to incoming students that the program is worth joining. The remaining members fill color guard, dance and support roles that a modern marching show depends on.

Senior Holly Garrick is in her second year as drum major, the student who conducts the band on the field and runs rehearsals day to day. A drum major with a season of experience behind her gives the program continuity — she knows the routines, the demands of competition days and the younger members by name.

Other student leaders include color guard captain Emonii Smith, featured twirler Isabella Sims, dance captains Keyana Bettis and Kristin Howard, band lieutenant and trumpet section leader Jude Dailey, band librarian Katie Harrington, band lieutenant and woodwind section leader Amy Roberts, band captain Braden Stauffacher and percussion section leader Zack Posey. That leadership roster spans every corner of the program — guard, dance, brass, woodwinds, percussion and the administrative work of keeping music distributed and equipment accounted for.

Student leadership structures like Thomasville’s do more than delegate work. Section leaders run warm-ups and coach their own sections during practice, captains choreograph and clean the visual work, and the band captain and lieutenants serve as the director’s eyes across the field. In a program with 38 students, those roles are not ceremonial — they are how the show gets learned at all.

The competition calendar

The band will compete on Sept. 26 at Patrician Academy in Butler and on Oct. 24 at the University Charter School in Livingston. Both dates fall within driving distance of Thomasville, in the small-school marching band circuit that runs across Alabama’s Black Belt each fall. Band competitions score programs on music performance, visual execution, color guard, percussion and overall effect, and for a band of 38 students the small-school classes offer a level field against similarly sized programs.

The September date at Patrician Academy lands early enough to serve as the season’s first measuring stick — typically a few weeks after the show’s field debut, when the drill is still fresh. The October competition at University Charter School in Livingston comes later, after a month and a half of refinement, when the full show should be at its most polished. That spacing gives the band two distinct goals: get the show on the field in September, and have it competition-ready by the end of October.

For band families, competition days are the season’s marquee events — long Saturdays of buses, uniforms, equipment trailers and the haul of instruments, flags and props that a halftime show requires. They are also where a program’s growth shows: fuller sound, cleaner drill and stronger guard work are the visible dividends of the larger roster and the successful camp Boyett described.

An alumni invitation

This season, the band also plans to invite alumni members to join current students and play together in the stands at a home game. Alumni nights have become a beloved tradition in programs across Alabama, and they do double duty: they give former members a night back in the stands with their instruments, and they show current students — particularly the seniors deciding whether music stays in their lives after graduation — that the program is a community, not just a class.

For a band whose numbers are climbing, alumni participation reinforces the point. Every returning graduate who picks up a horn at a home game is evidence that the program’s influence outlasts a student’s four years, and the sound of alumni and current members playing together in the stands is typically the loudest the bleachers get all season.

The invitation also fits the 1990s theme more neatly than it might first appear. Many of Thomasville’s band alumni graduated within reach of the boy band era itself, and the show’s songs are the ones they grew up hearing on the radio. When alumni join the stands this fall, the halftime show below them will be the soundtrack of their own school years — a convergence the band director could not have scripted better.

Between the late-July camp, the growing roster, two competition dates and an alumni night, the Mighty Tiger band’s 2026 season carries more moving parts than most. The through line is the show itself: three Backstreet Boys songs, one NSYNC finale, and a brass section the music was chosen to feature, on a field in Thomasville every Friday night the Tigers play at home.

Building a show from camp to Friday night

The path from a late-July camp to a complete halftime production runs through weeks of layered work. Students learn the music first, usually in sectionals run by the section leaders named to this year’s roster, then marry it to drill — the charts that place all 38 members in formation across the field. Guard and dance work develop on a parallel track under their captains, and the featured twirler’s routine is timed to the same musical cuts the brass is playing.

Boyett’s expectation that fans will see the complete show after a few weeks of the regular season matches that rhythm. Early-season games typically feature the opener and part of the second song, with additions each week as memorization and marching fundamentals catch up to the full chart. By the time the band boards the bus for the Sept. 26 competition in Butler, the goal is a complete show that can be cleaned, not learned, in the final weeks before Livingston.

Marching band also demands from small-school students a schedule most sports do not. Rehearsals run before and after school, members log hours in summer heat during camp, and game nights end with unloading trucks and racking uniforms. The 25 musicians and 13 other members of this year’s band carry that load alongside their classwork, which is part of why band programs treat student leadership as a teaching structure — the older members have learned the system, and the system runs through them.

Why the boy band era works on a football field

The 1990s boy band catalog translates to marching band unusually well. The songs were built on strong melodic hooks and layered group vocals, which arrangers can split across brass and woodwind sections to create the call-and-response textures marching shows thrive on. The tempo range helps too: “Everybody” and “Bye Bye Bye” bring drive for drill movement, while “I Want It That Way” gives the show a ballad moment where the guard and dance lines can carry the emotion.

The theme’s pop appeal also serves the program beyond the fall. Recruitment in small-school bands happens through what prospective members see on Friday nights, and a show that gets the student section singing along is worth more than any recruitment pitch. With enrollment in the band already rising, a crowd-pleasing theme in 2026 gives Thomasville’s directors another argument for why students should sign up in 2027.

The Mighty Tiger band’s season now proceeds on two tracks at once — Friday nights in Thomasville, where the show grows a section at a time in front of the home crowd, and two Saturdays on the competition circuit, where the finished product gets scored. The 1990s soundtrack will follow it to both.