Valencia High School’s Band and Color Guard competed at the 28th annual Moorpark High School Battle of the Bands on Saturday and received top honor awards for their performances.
The Battle of the Bands is a field competition where high schools come together and compete with several thousand performers from marching bands and color guard programs across Southern California.
Kelvin Flores, director of instrumental music, and Lorraine Kohagen, head of color guard, led “The Pride of Vikings” in their first competition of the year in a show called “Lunar Embrace.”
“It’s a four-part telling of an anonymous poem about the ocean and the moon, falling in love with falling in love with each other,” said Flores. “They’re always so close, and they attract each other with tidal waves and things like that, but they can never be together. It’s this star-crossed lover’s theme.”

Their teams received awards for Band Sweepstakes, Color Guard Sweepstakes, Visual Sweepstakes, Music Sweepstakes and 2A Green High Percussion. Flores said being able to win sweepstakes was a high honor because it is the highest score out of all the divisions.
“This really meant a lot for our students because we have been working so hard since June and July, and we’ve been putting hours and hours of work, and to see it finally come and get rewarded for all the work that we put in is really important,” said Flores.
Flores added that at Valencia High School, they strive to teach the students that hard work leads to good results. He hopes his students hold pride in representing the Santa Clarita Valley and their high school.
“The Pride of the Vikings” and the bands from the other six SCV Foothill League high schools will be competing at the 40th annual Hart Rampage marching band and field show tournament this Saturday.