A lot of hard work has paid off for two area high-school marching bands.

Montezuma-Cortez High School finished as state runnerup in the Class 4A State Bandmasters Competition in Denver last weekend and Mancos High School finished third in Class 2A earlier in the week at Pueblo.

Cortez finished the finals with a score of 84.15. Ponderosa, which has been a Class 5A school for the past 10 years and only this year dropped into 4A, won with a score of 86.65 with ironically the same musical selection that MCHS had played only moments before, "Storm Works."

"Believe it or not, they played the same program as ours," MCHS band director Rodney Ritthaler said. "It was absolutely bizarre. But the middle number was arranged a little differently so it wasn’t exactly the same."

The Panthers’ version of "StormWorks," which is a collection of movements dedicated to living and facing life, was musically arranged for high school band play by Scott Hickey while Jack Chambers wrote the drill. Mike Sherpa and Ritthaler collaborated on the percussion. Eric Ashton, assistant, and Jessica Linde helped with the show.

The MCHS color guard (auxiliary) captured the state title with 90 points. The guard is under the direction of Linde. The Panther drum majors (seniors Brittany Johnson and Daniel Puls) were chosen "outstanding" with 85 points. The MCHS percussion pit came in third place.

MCHS did not win any caption awards; Ponderosa got those.

"I’m just very proud of the kids," Ritthaler said. "All their hard work paid off."

The Cortez band emerged from preliminaries as the No. 2 band Saturday morning at Englewood High School Stadium with a score of 84.75.

"That was a really good score. We played better that morning than we had at Delta (regionals). We had addressed some musical issues and corrected those before prelims," Ritthaler said.

Cortez had an outstanding year by finishing first in field show and marching at both Grand Junction and Delta. The band will perform a special Fan Appreciation Show at 5:30 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 2, at Panther Stadium. There is no admission charge.

The Blue Jays were among only four schools that scored high enough from preliminaries to qualify for the finals in the 2A competition at Pueblo. They captured fourth place, with the color guard taking second under first-year band director Joey Wilson. Tanya Young guided the color guard.

"I thought the kids played very well," Wilson said. "There weren’t many teams to score enough points to make finals. But we played well enough to get in. But I thought in the finals we performed well. I thought we had done well at regionals, too, but the judges thought a little differently."

They performed some rock-’n’-roll songs from the 1970s. The field was under the direction of senior drum major Sven McNeil.