The Cougar Pride Band has earned straight 1’s for their performance at the UIL Region 9 Marching Contest, allowing them to move onto the UIL Area contest this Saturday.

It was held at the Woodforest Bank Stadium and hosted by Conroe ISD. This was held on Oct. 19 with a total of 32 high school bands competing.

“Our strength so far has been our musicianship on the field,” Director Joseph Nunez said.

They performed their show Celestial Journey which included all the props, visuals, and music.

“I’m glad we made it to area,” Freshman Braden Soetaert said. “We worked hard to make it where we are now and I believe our hard work is paying off.”

They will be performing bright and early at 10:30 am. With the first performance, prelims, being the playing factor on if they move to finals. From their those scores will decide on whether or not they make it to UIL State finals in San Antonio.

“It’s time to give it our all to attempt at making area finals, then attempt going to state, I believe we have the willingness to do it, there’s just few things we need to clean,” Sophomore Christina Rodriguez said.

In 2019 they made it state but because of Covid the band never got to perform. This year is a whole new opportunity for newcomers and upperclassman to really live out the full marching band experience.

“This is our chance to showcase all we’ve done to create this show, to not only perform our best but present an artistic product that we are proud of.  We’ve made consistent improvement and I can’t wait to how much better we’ve gotten since Region,” Assistant Director Matthew Cho said.