Category Archives: South Kitsap School District

A Very Busy Week Ahead

SKHS Band accepting the Tournament of Roses Flag on June 11, 2009.

Though they were notified a few months before that they were invited, the official invitation to march in the Tournament of Roses Parade is the Tournament of Roses flag. It was officially presented to the SKHS Marching Band on June 11, 2009, at Joe Knowles Stadium, by Sally Bixby, from Tournament of Roses Executive Committee (see picture at left).

That was six months ago. Now, in less than a week, the SKHS Marching Band will represent South Kitsap in front of hundreds of thousands in person and millions on national TV. There is no group better prepared to represent their community! Let’s hear it for the band!!

In addition to performing on January 1st in the Rose Bowl Parade, the SKHS Marching Band will also be performing at Disneyland (on Tuesday, December 29th), and participating in BandFest at the Rose Bowl Stadium (on Wednesday, December 30th) . They have a few additional fun, exciting, and educational activities during the week too. Not to mention daily practice sessions. They will be quite busy all week long.

As ‘band groupies’ for the week, we hope you enjoy the pictures, videos, and comments as the Tournament of Roses week marches on for the SKHS Marching Band.

Special shout-out and thank you to Mr. Grams, the SKHS Band Boosters, and most especially, every parent of the band members. As they play their hearts out and march 5.5 miles on January 1st, they have you to thank for believing in them, supporting them, and teaching them to give it their best step forward each and every day!

-Kathryn Simpson

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South Kitsap Band’s March to the Roses, The Video That Started it All

Chris Henry

Posted on YouTube; Credit: South Kitsap High School Video Productions

Here they are doing Bon Jovi’s “You Give Love a Bad Name” at the Peninsula Classic Competition, 2009. They’ll be playing this tune in the Rose Parade. The second song is “Dead or Alive,” which they will play at Bandfest Dec. 30 at Pasadena City College, featuring field show performances by all the Rose Parade bands. Check out how they lean back on the chorus.

And in case you missed it, here’s the Kitsap Sun’s video on how the band got ready for the challenge of the Rose Parade.Chris Henry, Kitsap Sun Reporter

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Meet the Bloggers

Chris Henry

(With apologies to Ben Stiller)

As part of our coverage of South Kitsap High School Marching Band’s participation in the Rose Parade, we are hosting this March to the Roses blog.

The blog is truly a group effort. Contributors include Kitsap Sun staff, band members, Band Boosters and a school district official. Meet the bloggers.

Paulla Santos, a senior, is lead drum major. Paulla keeps the band in line with a firm hand on the baton.

James Damian, a junior, is the second of three drum majors, with Simone Schaffer.

Megan Sanger, a senior, plays the mellophone. Her dad and uncle marched in the parade in 1976.

Hannah Melcher, a senior is a clarinet player and clarinet section leader.

Kathryn Simpson is school board president. She and her daughter Stephanie, a senior at SKHS, will be band groupies, following the band to L.A. and checking in on their adventures. Stephanie also will contribute to the blog.

You, too, can be part of the action. Other band members, parents and friends of the band can upload pictures and videos to the Kitsap Sun’s Web site under the South Kitsap Band March to the Roses heading. We may pull some of them to the blog. E-mail comments and observation for publication on the blog to chenry@kitsapsun.com.

Chris Henry, reporter

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Tournament of Roses History Includes Ostrich Races

Chris Henry

On Jan. 1, the South Kitsap High School Marching Band will play in the 2010 Rose Parade. The Parade’s history goes way back.

Before there was a Rose Bowl Game, there was the Tournament of Roses Parade, staged in 1890 by members of Pasadena’s Valley Hunt Club. These former residents of the East and Midwest were eager to showcase their new home’s milder weather.
“In New York, people are buried in snow,” member Charles F. Holder is said to have announced at a club meeting. “Here our flowers are blooming and our oranges are about to bear. Let’s hold a festival to tell the world about our paradise.”
Set in the City of Pasadena, the festival included marching bands, motorized floats and flower bedecked horse-and-carriages. There were games on the town lot which was renamed Tournament Park in 1900. These included ostrich races, bronco busting demonstrations and a race between a camel and an elephant. The elephant won.

Eastern newspapers began to cover the event, which grew until, in 1895, it became too much for the hunt club to handle. That year, the Tournament of Roses Association was formed and has managed the festival ever since.
In 1902, a football game was added to the festivities. It was the first post-season college football game ever held, Stanford University versus the University of Michigan. Stanford was thumped 49-0 and gave up in the third quarter.
For the next several years, the Tournament of Roses Association dumped football in place of Roman-style chariot races. But in 1916, the association reprised the football game, and it’s been a tradition ever since.
Within a few years, attendance at the game outgrew the stands in Tournament Park. The Tournament’s 1920 President William L. Leishman, spearheaded the construction of a “modern” bowl-type football stadium, similar to the Yale Bowl, in Pasadena’s Arroyo Seco area. The new stadium hosted its first New Year’s football game in 1923 and soon earned the nickname “The Rose Bowl.”
Nicknamed “The Granddaddy of Them All,” the Rose Bowl Game has been a sellout since 1947. That year’s contest was the first game played under the Tournament’s exclusive agreement with the Big Ten and Pac-10 conferences.
These days the Tournament of Roses Parade has gone high tech, with floats using computerized animation and made with exotic natural materials from around the world, including — you guessed it — thousands of roses.

The 2010 Rose Bowl Game
The 96th Rose Bowl Game, following the Rose Bowl Parade on Jan. 1, pits the Ohio State Buckeyes against the Oregon Ducks. Coverage begins at 1:30 p.m. (PST) on ABC and ESPN radio.
The Rose Bowl will also be the site of the 2010 Citi BCS (Bowl Championship Series) National Championship Game on Jan. 7 featuring the Number 2 BCS ranked Texas Longhorns versus the No. 1 BCS ranked Alabama Crimson Tide. The game will be broadcast on ABC.

Source: Tournament of Roses Association

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