BHS alumni part of UW marching band in Rose Bowl parade

BUFFALO (WNE) — The University of Wyoming Western Thunder Marching Band thrilled the crowd with its Wyoming Cowboy themed performance during the Tournament of Roses Parade on New Year’s Day in Pasadena, California.

The band, nearly 300 strong, performed a trio of songs – “The World Needs More Cowboys,” “Should Have Been a Cowboy,” and “Come On, Wyoming,” – along the 5-mile parade route.

“It was a really, really wonderful experience. It was a once in a lifetime experience,” said band member and Buffalo High School alumnus Nate Rzasa. Rzasa plays the sousaphone, which is larger than a tuba and weighs around 30 pounds. “It was really tiring, but I still had a lot of fun with it.”

Rzasa, who is a sophomore at UW studying computer science, and Ben Camino, a junior studying environmental science who plays the bass drum, are both alumni of BHS’s marching band program, and both said that marching in the Tournament of Roses Parade is entirely unlike any marching they’ve done in the past.

“I honestly don’t remember much from the parade,” Camino said. “The drumline plays the whole time – we have cadences in between the songs, so I was pretty focused the whole time and the parade was over real quick. The entire parade, there were people on both sides of the road; there wasn’t really any open spaces. It was pretty cool, but my back was sore and my shoulders were pretty sore afterward.”

Though the parade route “felt long,” Rzasa said that he and fellow sousaphone players did appreciate marching at sea level. Rzasa said that marching at 7,200 feet in Laramie, the members of the sousaphone section can find themselves out of breath as they struggle to march while they blow air through the giant instrument.

“So that was way less of a problem at sea level,” he said.

This story was published on January 9, 2025.