With every home football game comes a select group of students that sets up week after week in front of the Student Book Store to sing the songs every Penn State fan knows and loves.

This group, The Penn State Singing Lions, prides itself on its tradition of performing downtown for blue and white-clothed passersby as they trek up to Beaver Stadium.

"It's Penn State's singing and dancing ensemble. The group has been performing for the last 20 years or so," member Ryan Leach (junior-biobehavioral health) said.

The group, which has about 20 performers, spends at least an hour before every home game outside of the Student Book Store, 330 E. College Ave., singing Penn State fight songs, Leach said.

The group spends time downtown in an effort to help pump up the crowd before they even get to the stadium.

"It's really exciting to be downtown," member Stephen Millett (sophomore-vocal performance) said. "People stop and take their hats off for the alma mater."

Participation from passersby is a common occurrence for the Singing Lions, Millett said. People will often sing along as they make their way past the group, he said.

"There's definitely a lot of people that interact," Leach said.

The size of the crowd directly correlates to the importance of the game, Leach said.

"For the bigger games like Michigan, there are just a lot more people walking around downtown before the games so there are more that stop to listen to us perform," Leach said.

Depending on whether or not the game is against another Big Ten team, the crowd size can vary as well.

"If it's like a Big Ten game there's a bigger crowd," Heigel said. "Or if it's a game that's going to be closer."

Although the group performs without fail for every home game, Leach said it still sees people who don't know who they are.

"Sometimes I think people don't really know what's going on," Leach said.

In addition to singing downtown for home games, the Singing Lions perform at other football-related events, Singing Lions President George Heigel (senior-actuarial sciences) said.

The other performances include singing in the stadium club seats, singing for the Quarterback Club twice a year and at various alumni functions, Heigel said.

"We'll do retirement homes or high schools or anything," Heigel said.

In the past, the group has also performed at Joe Paterno's house, Millett said.

The group works hard to prepare for all of its shows.

"We practice three days a week," Millett said. "We'll have a few vocal rehearsals and then we'll go off book."

Despite the rigorous rehearsal schedule, it pays off in the end, Heigel said.

"We're kinda like a family. We work really hard but we have a lot of fun," Heigel said. "We like to think of ourselves as Penn State's singing ambassadors."

The Singing Lions also perform a fall and spring show on campus and tour up and down the East Coast in the spring semester. The tour repertoire is much different from the selections the group sings on College Avenue, with pop, jazz and Broadway medleys, among others.

"For each concert, we usually have three to five medleys. In the spring we had a Hairspray medley and a big band medley. There's probably like five songs or so in each medley," Leach said.

The group also spends a lot of time working on choreography for its shows.

"Our choreography this year incorporates a lot of different styles into a medley. Some of it's really musical theater-type things, but some of it is modern," Leach said.

For the tours, one of the Lions' traditions is to invite the alumni onstage to perform.

"It's fun to do 'cause it connects us to the alumni," Heigel said.

The group has different expectations between the downtown performances and the tour.

"There's definitely a difference of how formal it is. That's fun 'cause there's less pressure [downtown]," Leach said.