<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/68b8f77a6f404.image.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
Illustration by Ryeleigh Hood<\/a><\/p>\n In the summer of 2024, UTA President Jennifer Cowley approached the Department of Music to request a refresh of UTA\u2019s fight song for the university\u2019s 130th anniversary. The song would become a lasting legacy of the students who worked on its creation and Douglas Stotter, former director of bands, who died in April.<\/p>\n The conception of the song began in a songwriting class taught by Will Townsley, assistant professor and area coordinator of music industry studies. The class was tasked with writing the lyrics and melody of the new fight song. It then moved on to Stotter and Chris Evans, associate director of bands, who worked on the arrangements of the song for the band to perform.<\/p>\n Kameryn McGlothlin, music industry studies major, said there\u2019s so much that goes into a fight song.<\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019re trying to really bring home that inspirational feeling of making everyone on campus feel involved when they hear it,\u201d McGlothlin said.<\/p>\n She emphasized that the goal as they wrote the new fight song was to make UTA feel like a place that is open to anybody and everybody.<\/p>\n \u201cJust a big reminder of: \u2018You can make it through the semester,\u2019\u201d she said. \u201cYou can make it through this, and you\u2019ve got a community at UTA. All of your comrades, every student on campus, is just trying to make it through and stay motivated.\u201d<\/p>\n Music business junior Faith Chipps said that coming up with a rhythm and a melody wasn\u2019t too difficult.<\/p>\n \u201cI think that was the easiest part, coming up with a rhythm, because it\u2019s very chanty, something that people can clap along to and stomp their feet,\u201d Chipps said. \u201cThen we moved on to the melody, the part that people sing. That was a really fun experience, because we just got to play around a lot with different fun melodies.\u201d<\/p>\n In the late \u201960s, the tune of UTA\u2019s fight song was \u201cDixie,\u201d which later started to be seen as insensitive, along with the university\u2019s Rebel theme. In 1971, UTA changed its mascot from the Rebels to the Mavericks and debuted with a new fight song.<\/p>\n The newest fight song aims to keep some connection to the old one while also being its own song.<\/p>\n Shortly after Stotter finished the final arrangement for the song, he died due to an apparent heart attack.<\/p>\n The Maverick Marching Band makes its way down Spaniolo Drive during the Homecoming Parade and Maverick Walk on Nov. 9, 2024, at UTA\u2019s College Park District.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/67316bee6f46a.image.jpg\")
<\/p>\n