Norman Brown
September 4, 2015
King of the Swamp: ZZ returns home; happy for experience
September 9, 2015
Even before classes begin for the fall, the Terrebonne High School marching band was practicing in the summer heat.
Moving among the hundred or so teenagers on the field, speaking to them through a microphone headset is Vaughn Luquette, last year’s District Band VII Director of the Year. Even if they can’t see him, they can hear him, counting, encouraging them and telling them not to talk.
“The horns can sit,” he says. “Let’s do it this time without music,” he directs, and they listen, taking precision steps to imaginary music. The expressions on the faces of the band members say it all – they’re intent on getting it right.
For Luquette, being named Band Director of the Year is nothing new. It’s the second time in his 11 years at Terrebonne High School. “It’s long hours, I get up early, school starts at 7:15 (a.m.). I have six band classes a day. After school, practice is until 5 (p.m.) on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and when we have an away football game, sometimes we don’t get back to school until 1 in the morning,” Luquette said, but it’s all worth it. “When I was presented with the award in January, I thanked my colleagues and former band directors for their support. But, I could be the best thing, but if the kids aren’t on board, it wouldn’t matter. It’s all about the kids.”
Luquette, a graduate of LSU and a Tiger band alum, said the easiest thing about his job is getting up everyday, knowing he’s going to work with band students. Their parents, he said, comprise the Band Booster organization and, every year, they raise thousands of dollars that they let him spend on the band for instruments, music, food and transportation. “That’s a lot of shrimp dinners,” he said.
And, while the students spend their mornings on the practice field learning the routines, members of the booster club are there, fixing lunch, because after the one-hour lunch break, it’s back on the field, for three more hours, toting instruments, marching and learning. Luquette reminds them to save him a sports drink.
“We just love him,” one of the mothers said. Jamie Luke, whose daughter Ashley Bunch is a guard, said Luquette “is amazing; he just cares so much for these kids.”
“He’s straightforward with them, his expectations are clear and he’s always encouraging them,” said Sherrie Dupre, mother of French horn player Alex Valure.
While the band is performing, which it does at all home and away Terrebonne High football games, Luquette said his place is on the sidelines, watching, and on Mondays, like football coaches do, they watch video footage to see what was done correctly and what needs improvement.
Luquette said the band director of the year award is a real honor, because it means his peers elected him and it’s based on his accomplishments and his commitment to the district. He said he got to serve as clinician for the parish honor band, meaning he got to conduct that band and work with the parish’s best musicians, he said.
Austin Taylor, the assistant band director at Terrebonne High School, in his first year in the parish, said that he’s become a part of a great program. “This is a great community here, built all around this guy, I’m excited to see where he’s going with the program,” Taylor said.
One great thing about Luquette, he said, is that he’s willing to listen to suggestions and he’s open to new ideas; he realizes that its not just his program, it’s ours.”
Luquette also holds a master’s in educational leadership from Arkansas State, but he says it would be hard to get him to leave Terrebonne High, unless he got an offer he couldn’t refuse. To get him to give up the band, he said, he might consider moving up to the front office of the school he loves.
“Once a Tiger, always a Tiger,” he said.
Luquette
