Band members from Lincoln-Way High School District returned Thursday from their trip to California, which included making their fourth appearance in the annual Tournament of Roses Parade.
“It was fantastic,” Chris Mroczek, one of the district’s directors, said as students waited at Los Angeles International Airport for their flight home. “The weather was perfect and the kids made it through the whole 6-mile route.”
“The kids played great and were well prepared,” Mroczek said.
The band brought 202 musicians and several parent volunteers, and the trip also included a performance and parade Sunday at Disneyland as well as taking part in Bandfest, one of the events connected to the parade.
The two-day event features all of the bands marching in the parade and is held at Pasadena City College. Lincoln-Way was the only Illinois band this year.
For the 136th edition of the Tournament of Roses Parade, Lincoln-Way performed pieces including “Battle Hymn of the Republic” and a version of “Land of Make Believe” by Chuck Mangione, Mroczek said.
What television viewers of the parade saw was the band performing a scene from the film “The Magnificent Seven,” which Lincoln-Way also did as part of the Bandfest before the parade, he said.
The band’s regular marching season begins in the spring, and musicians had been preparing for Bandfest and the parade for several months, Mroczek said.
Band members learned in October 2023 Lincoln-Way was selected for the Tournament of Roses Parade.
Lincoln-Way most recently marched in the parade in 2019, and before that in 2000 and 1982.
Following the closure in 2016 of Lincoln-Way North High School in 2016, musicians from the three remaining schools in Frankfort and New Lenox were combined to form one community band.
Performing in major parades is not uncommon for Lincoln-Way, with the band taking part in the 2021 Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York in 2021.
Lincoln-Way learned in spring 2019, just months after the band’s most recent performance in the Tournament of Roses Parade, it was slated for the 2020 Macy’s parade.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, however, the band’s appearance in the parade was pushed back a year, with the 2020 Macy’s parade being relegated to mainly a TV event.
Mroczek said apart from band members themselves, Lincoln-Way had the support of several band parents and other volunteers who participated.
“We have 202 musicians, so it can be really challenging,” he said of the volunteers’ job of watching over the students.
Some of them left at 5 a.m. on Christmas Eve with trucks carrying luggage and band instruments and headed to California, and left early Thursday for the trip back home, he said.
