The city of Manhattan gathered Friday night to observe the Mayor’s Spirit of the Holiday Lights Parade. Manhattan High students in band, cheer, dance and other activities lined up at 5:30 p.m. to march down Poyntz, through Aggieville and eventually end in City Park.

Residents of Manhattan listened to the holiday classics and watched as holiday-themed floats passed by.

Friday was the marching band’s last time performing this year. That means this is also the last time for some of the seniors to get in front of a crowd and show what they can do.

“It’s sad because marching band is like a family,” senior Ethan Koopman said. “It’s just all bunches of different people and we all seem to like each other when we are in marching band. I’m going to miss that.”

Although marching season is finished, seniors still have a final opportunity to play in the winter Pep Band.

As part of marching the band members were able to dress up with lights to show off their holiday cheer.

“It’s a lot of fun to dress yourself up with lights on your hat and on your uniform and on your instrument. It’s one of the longer parades so you’re pretty fatigued by the end but that’s just a pay off,” Koopman said. “Also it’s just good to see people cheering for us on the side and in the streets. They will have whistles and yell ‘you guys rock,’ stuff like that,” Koopman said.

The dance team lined up and performed their routines to holiday songs played by the band.

“We learned choreography for the specific parade to the Christmas music that the band plays. We only got the songs on the Wednesday before the parade, so our time was a little cramped for learning,” senior Maddison Goddard said

Even with a small amount of practice time, the dance team was still able to pull off their routines.

“I think we did good. Parades are like a really stressful time and your mind kind of just goes everywhere. All the girls on the team do really good at focusing on what they need and making sure they are with their team,” Goddard said.

The MHS Cheer team took some time during the week in between practices to create a float to ride on for the parade. During the parade the team performed their cheers in support of MHS.

“I think we did pretty great because once we hit Moro Street in Aggieville, we called constant cheers throughout the whole street, unlike throughout the rest of the parade where it was like every now and then but then once we hit where most the people were it most constant cheers nonstop,” junior Hailey Reyes said.

While students were performing in the parade, they got to interact with the crowd and see the impact they have on the community.

“I like to see all the little girls that would wave at you and get so happy about waving back,” Reyes said. “And you could hear some of them say ‘I want to be a cheerleader, I want to be a cheerleader’ and that just brought the biggest smiles to my face.”