The Countryside High marching band is raising money to travel to Texas to perform at the Cotton Bowl.
By JANE MADDEN WELCH
Published November 15, 2005
CLEARWATER - Countryside High School's Golden Cougar Band of Pride hopes to start off the new year on a high note.
The band is one of 16 high school bands invited to perform in the Cotton Bowl festivities on New Year's weekend in Dallas.
"It's really cool to be able to do this my senior year," said tenor sax player Ryan Catarelli, 17. "It's the most fun I've had in high school."
Assistant drum major Jacqui Zahralban, 15, said the trip "playing for all those fans, so many people, it's going to be amazing."
It's also going to be expensive.
Carol Lynch, president of the Golden Cougar Band Boosters, estimated the trip will cost $62,000. About $37,000 will come from fees paid by band members, chaperones and guests.
But that still leaves the daunting task of raising $25,000.
"Every band in the county is financially challenged," Lynch said. "We just have to step it up."
That means carwashes, tag days, pizza and cookie dough sales, restaurant coupons, poinsettia sales, game night concession stands and business sponsorships.
As determined as band members and boosters were to meet their goal, they still kept an eye on those in need. When Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast, they donated $1,700 from a Sept. 11 carwash to the relief effort.
Lynch said the group is still about $10,000 short, but more fundraisers are scheduled, including a Dec. 8 holiday concert and silent auction.
The Golden Cougar Band is the fourth largest high school band in the county, with 91 members, 26 of them in the color guard. The band was recently named grand champion at the 33rd Largo Golden Invitational competition and will compete Saturday in the Florida Marching Band Coalition state championship.
Band director Vince Parulli credits the boosters for much of the band's success. "The parents here, the booster organization, they are absolutely amazing," he said.
In 1983, when Parulli was a freshman at Countryside High, he told his father he would one day be the school's band director. Twenty years later, Parulli replaced longtime band director Samuel Hayward, who retired in 2002.
"(Hayward) was my mentor," said Parulli, 36. "My umbilical cord is attached right to the center of the band room."
Parulli played a small tuba known as the euphonium at Countryside. He graduated from the University of South Florida and attended the U.S. Military School of Music in Norfolk, Va. He was the band director at Land O' Lakes High School for four years before coming to Countryside. He and his wife, Emily, live in New Port Richey.
"I haven't hit my snooze button in three years," Parulli said. "I love being here."
The effort seems to have paid off. Layne Johnson of Salt Lake City has been the festival director since 1997. He said letters went out over the summer to a limited number of high school bands across the country, inviting them to participate in the 70th anniversary of the Cotton Bowl.
It will take two coach buses and a trailer to transport the students, their luggage, uniforms and instruments to Dallas for the Cotton Bowl. Their weeklong adventure will begin Dec. 28 and will include playing in the Cotton Bowl parade on New Year's Day and the pregame and halftime shows at the SBC Cotton Bowl Classic on Jan. 2.
Band members will also participate in a field show competition, a concert band competition and mass band rehearsals.
New Year's Eve will include a dinner, dance and awards ceremony at the Southfork ranch, where the TV series Dallas was filmed. Parulli said most of the students "don't have a clue" what the prime-time soap opera is.
For the students, however, the exciting part will be on the field.
"What a great experience for us," said senior Fofi Panagiotouros, 17, the band's drum major and a clarinet player in the school's concert band.
