'The stars aligned': High school percussion from Herriman headed to world championships

HERRIMAN — A group of Herriman high school band students are headed to the "Olympics" of percussion competition just three years after the indoor band program got revamped.

The Mountain Ridge High School winter percussion ensemble will be competing at the Winter Guard International Percussion World Championships next week in Dayton, Ohio, on April 10, 11 and 12.

The 34 students who play percussion instruments ranging from tenor drums to cymbals to marimbas and more will be performing "Echoes of Ashes," a seven-minute set depicting the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in Pompeii.

Their set includes a volcano with magma running down it and ash erupting out and covering all of the musicians, freezing them in time.

"That's always been a history moment that has stuck with me and my staff, what it looks like when in that moment the catastrophe happened, they were frozen. And how could we recreate that?" band director Cristopher Stiles said.

The students said they are hoping people can feel the passion and work they put into their set and understand the story they are portraying.

While many people know what a marching band is, the winter guard is just the color guard and drumline sections of the band that can compete in their own divisions in the spring, while wind and brass instruments have their own sit-down band events. For world championships, just the percussion members will be competing in their own division.

Stiles started at Mountain Ridge three years ago. As a drummer himself, he wanted to revamp the percussion program to bring it to a higher standard.

"It's taken us three years to get to this point. This didn't magically happen. These seniors were our baby sophomores and freshmen on that line," Stiles said. "They are hungry; they want it. So we sort of started fresh then."

The first indoor season had lots of bumps in the road, Stiles said. The students were great at producing the music, but the design of their performance set — costumes, choreography, props and flooring — were a bit "atrocious," looking back, Stiles joked.

With the addition of three "of the most competent and killer creative guys" on the staff who knew their way around the winter guard, "the stars aligned," he said.

"Absolutely, world-class guys. They came on, and it sort of magically came into place," he said.

In 2024, the Mountain Ridge percussion ensemble blew the competition away at regionals, outscoring everyone by several points. So this year, the team decided to set their sights even higher.

"I started asking the kids, 'What if we went to world finals in Dayton?'" Stiles said. "One thing led to the next, and then we were registered to go."

Ranked 14th in the country, the Sentinels leave Wednesday for the three-day competition.

"Regardless of how we do, we are excited to even be in the conversation. These kids have grown so much in the three years we have taught them. Watching them go from not having a handle on what they are doing to competing at the highest level, there's nothing a teacher can ask for more," he said.

Marimba senior Joe DeNamur has been at the school since the beginning of the indoor program. He said it's been a process watching the program be built back up from ground zero.

Jonathan Belcher, a junior on the snareline, and Ben VanDuren, a senior who plays the xylophone, said it's been cool to watch all of the students push themselves to help the program become better each year.

"We have at least already put in hundreds of hours of practice. We have every detail so honed in, we know exactly what we are supposed to be doing, down to every tiny movement," VanDuren said.

The best part of this process has been watching the students embrace the challenges and stretch themselves to become better, he said.

"Watching them each year has been rad," he said. "These kids identify as drummers, this is a big part of who they are. They find value and to be rewarded — there's nothing that builds self-confidence and self-actualization more than being on a team and doing those kinds of things."

Mountain Ridge will be the second school from Utah to ever attend the world championships, which has been operating for more than 30 years.

"One big thing that I don't think most people realize is how large of a time (commitment) and sacrifice it is for us to do this thing that we love so much," DeNamur said. "It's really nice to see having done it for so long, and getting to this really big thing for our last hurrah is really rewarding."

Although DeNamur is nervous to be on the world stage, he is excited to be surrounded by world-class talent. VanDuren said it's "unreal" and crazy" getting to compete.

The seniors are looking forward to competing one last time as a team before graduating. VanDuren is proud of how far the program has come and is excited to see what becomes of it after he moves on.

"I'm super excited for next year and see where our program ends up but it definitely will be really sad without the seniors," Belcher said.

Correction: Mountain Ridge is not the first Utah school to attend the world championship, Lone Peak High School attended in 2006 and 2007.

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