On Mar. 27, students who bought a ticket could enter the auditorium during activity period, finishing up the long five-day week with the annual Battle of the Bands. Four groups of students compete against each other in a battle of music. These groups perform a song of their choice and student viewers vote upon their performances.
Every year, the PALs organization puts on Battle of the Bands as a fundraiser for the Ryan Briones Memorial Scholarship. Ryan Briones, a former Sandie, NHS president, member of PALs and violist in the school orchestra; passed away Dec. 17, 2002. Since then, PALs has continuously hosted Battle of the Bands.
The group, Angst, performed the song Breed by Nirvana. The group members Draven Warren, Myles Price and Deckland Ormson started off the 2026 Battle of the Bands. Despite placing fourth overall, the group’s performance was well-received by the audience.
“We performed Breed by Nirvana,” Warren said. “We chose that song because we all like Nirvana, but we didn’t want to play a basic song like Smells Like Teen Spirit or Heart Shaped Box, so we chose a song that was semi-popular but not too niche where nobody knew it.”
The winning group, Spoilt, took first place after performing the song Sanitarium by Metallica. The band consisted of Parker Webb, Carson Phillips, James Teichmann and Steven Gutierrez, who attends Randall High School. 
“I thought since our song wasn’t as well known people wouldn’t vote for us,” Webb said. “However, it was a pleasant surprise to learn that we won.”
The second place band, Beans, consisted of the students Austin Homer, Traeton Bounsing, Jeremiah Cunningham, Jackson Hubbard, Jaxson Richards, Chudier Ismael and Nathan Smith. The group performed Taylor Swift’s Love Story, which had the audience engaged to end the event. In fact, they subbed in for three other groups who had to drop Battle of the Bands.
“In the moment I was very nervous because we only had two rehearsals and they were both the day we performed,” Homer said. “Afterwards, I felt pretty satisfied because we did not sound that bad and had the most crowd involvement”
7’O Clock Traffic, who placed third, performed the song Creep by Radiohead. Justin Luong, Laken Derrington and Kennedy Cardenas sang the vocals while Justus Roller played the keyboard, Emerson Johnston played the guitar, Coulter Taylor and Noah Henderson played the drums.
“I was very nervous to perform in front of my peers,” Luong said. “But with the band, it was very fun and enjoyable.”
Overall, each band seemed to have a sense of nervousness-turned-enjoyment from the event and enjoyed performing, regardless of their placement.
