The orchestra recently won first place at their first competition. The students started two Saturdays back loading into buses and heading off to play two songs, Sinfonia and America’s Cup.

“I was really so happy with their playing,” said Karey Sitzler, the orchestra director, “considering that we were putting together a group of kids from all the four classes that we have here at Ocean Lakes, the fact that the group that we assembled seem to all play from their hearts, and that they took the performance really seriously. I thought it was great. They really played well.”

Afterwards, they headed for Busch Gardens to go on rides and attend their award ceremony.

“It was really fun,” said Xavier Murphy, a viola. “The performance I thought was really amazing, and we really did a great job in everything like sound quality.”

When the award ceremony came, everyone made their way to the theater in New France where they were announced first place for their performance.

“The highlight of this is probably learning about the trophy part,” said Antonio Velazquez, a bass. “I got to go up and grab the trophy myself, actually. So grabbing the trophy and finding out that we got first place overall was really good.”