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The U.S. Navy Blue Angels are in La Crosse this weekend for the Deke Slayton Airfest.

For some of the flight team, this air show is a homecoming.

“It feels incredible to be back in Wisconsin,” Lieutenant Commander Griffin Stangel said.

The Madison native has been on the Blue Angels team for three years, but moved to the Lead Solo role this year.

“I’ve been looking forward to this one all year,” he said about the airshow in La Crosse.

Stangel graduated from Madison West High School in 2008. While he was a student there, he said he was fortunate enough to take an aviation class at Edgewood High School.

“The opportunity to take that class over at Edgewood, working through the school counselors to allow me to do that was actually pretty special,” he said.

“And that really kind of lit the fire for my love of aviation. Because I knew I wanted to fly.

I just really didn’t know what opportunities were out there.”

Even being back in the badger state, Stangel’s mission to inspire is the same wherever the Blue Angels travel.

“You see all of the smiling faces and we’re only in town for three or four nights, right.

So it’s pretty fast and furious,” he said.

But every where we go, any chance we get to interact with the local public, it’s pretty inspiring.

To be honest, we’re not that different from anybody else, we just made a decision to work really hard and we happen to really like flying and that’s what we wanted to be good at.

But there’s somebody out here who’s going to watch the show this weekend who could very well 10, 15 years from now be in this spot and that’s what we hope to see and we just hope people enjoy the show.”

The Blue Angels travel to 30+ different cities across the country a year for airshows.

Originally from Minnesota, Lieutenant Commander Amanda Lee also says it’s great to be back in the Midwest.

“It’s incredible being able to see the United States in that way and see the American public in that way.

It’s awesome,” Lee, the first female Blue Angels pilot said.

Lee says the extensive training and months long tour with lots of travel is the hardest part of the job.