Local student orchestra wins at Strawberry Festival

Colleen Tan

By Molly Page
South Charleston High School

Every May, Buckhannon hosts the annual West Virginia Strawberry Festival. Along with all the rides and games, there are several competitions — including the recently created orchestra competition. This was the second year that the combined South Charleston/Capital High School orchestra attended the festival. It was my first.

Our group is always combined because we have the same teacher, Colleen Tan, who is a private violin teacher and directs the orchestras at many Kanawha County schools. Since many of us are in All County strings together, we played the same music for our competition as we did for that.

Last year, when I was in middle school, I heard of our victory over our West Virginia rival — Morgantown High School. Morgantown was our biggest competition last year and the school we had to worry the most about this year. Mrs. Tan told us she was sure that Morgantown would be “coming back for blood” and practicing harder just to beat our group.

I couldn’t wait to go. I was sure we would win again.

We only had two rehearsals prior to the competition, but we spent a lot of time on the music during the All-County Strings Festival. We were prepared.

When we heard about all the orchestras that had entered, we found out that one of the schools was from New York. This frightened us a bit. But we had to remember that just because an orchestra is from New York doesn’t mean that all its musicians are pre-Julliard.

We arrived at the festival on a rainy Friday with high hopes of bringing home that first place trophy. We performed almost as soon as we got there with just a few minutes to warm up.

We got to hear a few other groups perform, but unfortunately we didn’t hear Morgantown or the school from New York. We did get to hear Horace Mann Middle School, though, which feeds into Capital. We cheered them on and hoped they would win the middle school division.

After we played, we went to eat and explored the festival a little. It was kind of hard to really enjoy it, though, because it was wet and really cold. We got to ride a few rides and play a few carnival games, and then it was back to the bus and off to the awards assembly.

During the assembly, the prizes were given by division and from lowest to highest ranking. When the middle school division was announced, Horace Mann won first place. We were happy for them, but the anticipation for our division was overwhelming.

Finally, it was our category. They got to second place, and our group still had not been called. Only the first place trophy was left, and we believed it would be between Morgantown and us.

Then the announcement came, and our name was called! It was the second victory for our orchestra in a row! Finally the anticipation was over, and we were so excited. We finally calmed down after a few pictures and the acceptance of the trophy.

But we realized something seemed fishy because Morgantown didn’t win anything. Little did we know, there was another division — symphony orchestra — and Morgantown entered that instead of the high school division. Morgantown was the only group to enter this division, so, of course, it won first place.

Overall we were all really excited about the win, and all of us who are underclassmen can’t wait to go again next year. Also next year, Mrs. Tan hopes to have us compete somewhere else besides the Strawberry Festival, so it should also be a very eventful year next year.