Mountain Ridge had its first home football game of the year on Friday, August 25th. Although the Mountain Lions lost 14-42, spirits were high, attendance was good, and it was an overall fun experience. While the football team is often recognized for their extraordinary efforts to prepare for a game, there is another facet of these events that often goes unnoticed, our marching band program, the Pride of the West. The halftime spectacle that occurs while the football teams break away to assess their first half performance also has a prolific amount of preparation, practice, and dedication going into it as well.

With the myriad of skills required, marching band members also have an incredibly rigorous rehearsal schedule. Cooper Terlizzi, a freshman tenor sax player, recounts, “The rehearsals are multiple times a week usually 2 for 3 hours and for wind instruments, a 1 hour sectional on Wednesday. We practice the marching show to make the parts that we know better, in addition on some Saturdays there is a 2:30-9:00 practice to learn new choreography or music for the show.”

All their efforts paid off in a spectacular halftime show. When asked about the performance, Terlizzi responded, “I felt pretty good about the performance last night, and although you can always improve it went pretty well in my opinion for the first football game”.