Marching Bands to Play Different Kind of (Musical) Game on Ridge High School's Football Field

Players in colorful uniforms will run tight routes among the hash marks. Flags will be thrown. There will be judgment calls. But this won’t be your ordinary gridiron contest.

The Ridge High School Marching Band Competition, set for Saturday, October 21 at 4:55 p.m. at Lee Field on the school’s South Finley Street campus, will offer a more musical drama than the football games that usually play out on that swath of green. More than 1,200 student musicians in 14 bands and color guards from all over New Jersey will perform in competition for awards and trophies in six size classes, with the host band performing last. Ridge High School’s 90-member band and color guard, which won the state championship in its class in 2015 and placed second in national competition in 2016, won its home competition last year.

And although music and color guard choreography don’t seem like competitive sports, the instrumentalists and flag twirlers bring as much passion to these tilts as those who come to the field in helmets and pads on Friday nights.

“The competition can be very intense,” said Dan Zugale, Ridge’s director of bands, who is in his ninth season in that role. “I tell the band that there is no defense in marching band: we can't affect our competitors’ performances, so we need to be as prepared as we possibly can so our performance stands out.”

The audience members are the winners in this kind of game, in which the bands and guards get to step out as more than halftime attractions and the music and pageantry are the stars. And by now, in the competition’s eighth year, traditions have taken root. The famous Ridge Marching Band Chili (regular and vegetarian) and pulled pork barbecue sandwiches, made by volunteers from all over the community, are as much as part of the experience as hot dogs at baseball games.

The Ridge High School Marching Band Competition is an all-ages event. Ridge High School is at 268 S. Finely Rd., Basking Ridge, 07920.