The 2009 football play-off season not only brought excitement for Coppell Cowboy fans, but it also meant more halftime shows for Coppell High School Band fans.

During the regular football season, CHS band fans get to watch the band’s contest show grow and develop each week.

But when extra games are added at the end of the contest season, it means ditching the contest show and adding in new halftime shows, which are less involved, yet entertaining for audiences to watch, said Scott Mason, CISD director of instrumental music.

“The play-off show is much different from your regular halftime show,” Mason said. “For play-off shows, you need to offer your audience and students something different each week.”

The main focus in a play-off show is entertainment for the audience and students, he said. “You have to do things that hopefully neither your audience nor students have seen before.”

This year with the success of the Coppell Cowboys, band fans got three extra halftime shows to enjoy.

The first halftime show in the (Dallas) Cowboys Stadium against the Keller Indians featured the band playing Earth Wind and Fire’s “In the Stone” and then spelling out the score at halftime which was Coppell 17, Keller 7.

The band ganged up on an Indian wandering on the field at the end for a great time for Coppell fans.

Then the second halftime show also in Cowboys Stadium for the Plano East game had the band honoring each branch of the United States military in a special pre-Thanksgiving halftime show.

The band spelled out ARMY, NAVY, USAF, USCG and USMC and then played the affiliated song for each.

The grand finale featured the band playing "America the Beautiful" while more than 40 band parents and Silver Spurs held up a giant flag that spanned 150 feet by 70 feet on the field.

The third show focused on the history of the Coppell Independent School District and included songs from each decade CISD has been in existence from “Land of a Thousand Dances” in the 1960s to “Vehicle” in the 1970s and “In the Stone” in the 1980s.

“Come Out and Play” was the featured song of the 1990s while 2009 was proclaimed “The Year of the Coppell Cowboys” and the band finished the performance by playing the “Coppell Fight Song.”

Mason said he has received many positive comments about the halftime shows from Coppell fans, opposing audience members, local radio stations and some local television stations.

Coming up with a new marching show each week sometimes was easy and sometimes it wasn’t so much, he said. “Sometimes the ideas would just come all at once and then one show took four full days of planning and re-doing,” he said.

Learning new music is probably the hardest part of a new show, he said. “In preparation for our patriotic show at Cowboys Stadium we spent nearly the entire week in class working on the music.”

Most of the time Mason tried to keep a lid on what the week’s show was about. And sometimes students did not learn what it was completely about until the rehearsal on game day.

Performing at the new Cowboys Stadium was much improved over Texas Stadium, Mason said, adding there was one thing he missed about performing at Texas Stadium.

“I still wish we could some way come marching out of the tunnel into the stands playing the fight song,” he said. “That was so much fun at Texas Stadium.”

Nevertheless, Mason said he looks forward to performing many more play-off shows next year when the Cowboys go all the way.