The band played notable pieces such as Synthetic Sunlight by Steven Bryant, and An American in Paris by George Gershwin. With a month to prepare the pieces, the band gave it their all to prepare for the concert. But unlike University Interscholastic League (UIL) season, pieces are lighthearted and laidback.

“The [Spring Concert] pieces were enjoyable to play,” Jonathan Chien ‘25 said. “The pieces were goofy, and it’s a time where we can just have fun with music that we usually don’t get to play during UIL, like movie soundtracks.”  

The light-hearted tone of the spring concert came with the addition of student conductor and Westwood alumni Mr. Cordell Foulk, who has been working with the program for five years.

“[Mr. Foulk] is kind and he’s been working with the program for so long [now],” Hannelore Sederholm ‘27 said. “He’s worked with us a lot over marching season, and when he became a student teacher it was nice because we all already knew him and he taught us very well.” 

The dimming lights and the band filing out of the PAC mark the end of the year, but members look forward to next semester for marching band to begin again.

“I’m really excited [for marching band],” Sederholm said. “Marching season was great last year, so I’m excited to see what this season brings.”

The Westwood Warrior Marching Band will bring their new show to life at the Bands of America (BOA) Austin Regional on Saturday, Sept. 20.

Staff and students stretched in the gym during Flex in preparation for the annual students versus staff basketball game as part of the National Honor Society (NHS) tradition on Friday, April 25.

Consisting of student and teacher volunteers, the annual students versus staff game is a tradition that brings energy to the student body as Advanced Placement (AP) exams approach. NHS recruited student athletes and NHS members alike for the team of students, and sent emails to teachers with a volunteering form for the staff team. In addition to a few basketball coaches, other teachers such as AP Calculus AB teacher Mr. James Cox also played for the staff team.

“I thought [the game] was great,” Mr. Cox said. “I loved watching it; just the cheering and screaming brought a ton of energy. Mr. Walker got that dunk, and [everyone screamed].”

The game itself was a success. The strong offenses of each team and the roar of the students whenever someone scored all led to an exciting victory by the staff, who prevailed 29-18. The NHS officers hope that this tradition will continue bringing awareness to other NHS events.

“[We wanted to host] the basketball game because it was a recognizable event and we wanted people to associate NHS with fun events like this,” NHS Secretary Prima Changwatchai ‘25 said. “[We want] more people to attend our important major fundraiser events in the future.”

The NHS typically hosts many events during the school year, including the Powderpuff football match and the annual Warriorfest. The student versus staff basketball game is one of these annual traditions, and since NHS was unable to host their traditional major events, they wanted to end the year with the annual game.

“[We] felt like it would be fun for everyone to see students compete against their teachers, coaches, and assistant principals in a chaotic setting,” Changwatchai said.

A Minecraft Movie, directed by Jared Hess and including stars like Jack Black, Jason Momoa, and Emma Myers, has become an instant classic in the film industry. Not because it’s a good movie: objectively, the movie is bad. It has poor character development, an underdeveloped story, and weird scene jumps. The movie was essentially just Jumanji (which also stars Jack Black) but in the Minecraft world and it felt abrupt. It’s obvious that the directors did not take themselves seriously during filming. However,  that’s why the movie was great. It’s one of those movies that’s hilariously bad, and therefore still enjoyable to watch.

When the first teaser was released in September, the movie gained criticism online for its unexpected usage of live-action —particularly how certain aspects were adapted into film— and its poor costume design. The animals from the movie looked freakish, Jason Momoa was wearing a hot pink jacket, Danielle Brooks was in an outlandish orange and purple jumpsuit, and Jack Black was wearing jeans and a light blue t-shirt.

The movie earned more criticism when the first official trailer was released in November with many calling it ridiculous, and questioning why the movie wasn’t animated like other video game adaptations such as The Super Mario Bros. In an interview with director Hess and producer Torfi Frans Ólafsson, he was asked the same question, and he responded that he would “rather than do something that has been done before with animation, create something that has never been seen before. There are a lot of YouTubers who are able to create really cool animated stuff very easily, but not a lot of people that could create something this big in live action.” 

As the days went by, the movie fell out of the zeitgeist until the final trailer was released in March and it took the internet by storm. People went crazy about how ridiculously Jack Black was pronouncing items from the game like “flint and steel,” and “the nether,” and memes surrounding the trailer went viral. Suddenly, hype was building around the movie, and all negative feelings about the movie turned into an ironic declaration of “this movie is going to be peak cinema.”

The theater experience was surreal, it was the most fun you could ever have watching a movie. Internet meme culture glorified certain moments in the trailer, and it became a trend to cheer, yell, and clap whenever Jack Black said anything. That’s what made this movie so great, half of the movie was just cheering and laughing with your friends. 

The movie itself was funny, and minus the animals, visually stunning. Before the release, the expectation of how the world was going to look was incredibly high. After all, Minecraft is the second best-selling video game, and its community is one of the largest in gaming with over 170 million monthly players. However, Hess managed to bring incredible detail with the adaptation. Every prop was made out of cubes, and the world looked beautiful. Every item from the game, like the swords and armor, looked exactly like what you would imagine if Minecraft was real life.  

Overall, A Minecraft Movie was really fun to watch if you look past the plot holes and poor character writing. It’s visually pleasing, funny and a dream come true if you’re a big Minecraft fan. The movie was rumored for years, but now it’s finally here and ready for you to gather a bunch of friends, settle down for a good movie night, and go crazy during the Chicken Jockey scene.

The band played notable pieces such as Three Celtic Dances by Brian Balmages, O Waly, Waly, by Jay Bocook, The Trombone King by Karl King arranged by John Paytner, and Symphonic Metamorphosis by Paul Hindemith.

“I thought we sounded really good, and the music we played was really fun,” Brody Walker ‘28 said. “October by Eric Whitacre was my favorite piece. I had a really good part in [it] and it sounded good when we all put our parts together.”

After their holiday concert and winter break, it’s full swing into the UIL season for the band. Unlike marching band, concert season does not have weekly competitions, but just a singular performance to demonstrate months of preparation.

“It was a lot of rehearsal but [it] was fun because all my friends were there.” Walker said. “We had a lot to focus on [and there] were all these little details that we fixed that made it all the more better.”

On April 1, two weeks before the evaluation, the band held their annual Pre-UIL concert at the Cedar Ridge High School Auditorium. The concert was an opportunity to run their program for an encouraging audience of parents and peers and take note of what still needed to be improved on before the big day.

“At our Pre-UIL concert, there were missed entrances and in some sections there were tears, but we [improved a lot and] didn’t make a single mistake for UIL,” Adaline Boyd ‘26 said.

The UIL Evaluation was spread across two days, where each band within the program had their opportunity to perform their pieces and sight-read for the judges. 

“We did sound very good, and I think we learned how to sound better as an ensemble instead of just individual players,” Boyd said. “We were able to play relatively hard pieces well, and for the short amount of time that we had [to prepare at the same time as] UIL Orchestra, I think we did pretty good.”

“This program means so much to me,” Figueiredo said. “As a transfer student [from Pearson Ranch], I came in and didn’t know anybody,and it was really cool to be taken in by people. The community is amazing and the directors [have] made the whole experience just so much fun and so rewarding.”

Figueiredo was inspired to join band in fifth grade after the band directors came to her elementary school to meet the students. In middle school, she continued developing her passion for music, and grew to love the band program. However, when high school came, she was unsure about participating in marching band.

“[Marching band] was very different from what I’ve done in the past. At first, I didn’t even want to march because [I thought it would be] too hard,” Figueiredo said. “So, I tried it for one year, and it was the best thing I’ve done with my life, and it’s just been so much fun.”

After discovering her love for marching, Figueiredo became a section leader to help inspire others and ignite that same passion in them.

“Looking back on my time as a section leader, I really learned how to help people and be a real leader,” Figueiredo said. “Before I was a section leader, I was really quiet and didn’t talk to people, so getting to be a leader with a big section like the flutes made me learn how to actually lead people.”

Figueiredo’s time as a section leader was her first step on the leadership path, with the next being becoming a drum major. With a nerve wracking audition process and a heavy time commitment, being drum major is no easy task.

“I didn’t want to become a drum major at first because I really liked marching,” Figueiredo said. “[Marching] was my favorite part about band, but I realized how important it was to be a leader and to help the program succeed.”

Despite having to give up the major aspect of marching to become a drum major, Figueiredo worked hard to achieve the position, and was able to find the rewarding aspects.

“It was really rewarding: being able to conduct, run sectionals, helping the directors, and just being able to take initiative and help the band get better was really nice,” Figueiredo said. “I also really liked working with the drum major team because we all had really great ideas that we wanted to implement, and we worked well together.”

Drum majors juggle many responsibilities for the band program. Although conducting on the field is a crucial part, Figueiredo worked hard to take her leadership further by making an effort to connect with each member.

“Being a drum major is about taking initiative and doing what you want to see in the band,” Figueiredo said. “The big commitment comes from emotionally being involved and wanting to change the band [for the better]. Putting in that extra time, coming up with ideas for the band, meeting with the other drum majors, fixing problems, and just being active all the time, isn’t something every drum major [is required to do], but it’s really important to excel and really help the band.”

Through her experiences in high school, Figueiredo’s passion for music and band has grown. After senior year, she plans on attending Stephen F. Austin State University for music education where she will continue pursuing what she loves.

“I want to be a band director someday because Ms. Dacy and Mr. Winters have really inspired me,” Figueiredo said. “I just love making music with other people and the leadership aspect as well, so I want to keep doing this for the rest of my life.”

Bill Watterson, the author of Calvin and Hobbes ran the strip from 1985 to 1995. Even though it only ran for ten years (unlike other popular strips like Garfield, which have run since 1978) it holds up to the test of time as the series still manages to connect with readers.

Calvin and Hobbes has resonated with many readers within their own lives. It was constantly pushing boundaries of what a comic strip could be, showing that a comic strip could be more than simple puns and jokes. It redefined how a comic strip could be narrated, as it is told in the perspective of a single character. 

Watterson manages complex shifts between Calvin’s imagination and fantasy and between his own reality. Take Hobbes, for example. He’s frequently shown interacting with Calvin as a playmate and a stuffed animal, defying what should be possible as a stuffed animal. 

Watterson frequently plays with the idea of Calvin’s reality, and according to an interview with Honk magazine, Watterson tries to get the reader to be “swept up into Calvin’s perspective and ignore adult perspectives.”

The way Watterson handles this idea of the reader getting swept up in Calvin’s perspective is phenomenal. He sucks in the reader with Calvin’s captivating imagination, and writes it with such expertise it’s almost as if a real six-year-old wrote the story. In one of the strips, it shows Calvin struggling against green globs of aliens, but in reality, it was just his mom’s food that he didn’t like. It’s something a real six year old, something that the readers have done before, and that’s what gives the strip its unique connection to reality which allows readers to connect to the material on a deeper and more authentic level.

Calvin’s constantly changing imagination is what keeps the readers hooked. Even Calvin’s continuous personas and storylines like Spaceman Spiff, Stupendous Man, and his never-ending obsession with dinosaurs and snowmen have something new every time. Watterson uses Calvin’s reality to make new scenarios, which become new adventures for him and Hobbes.

Speaking of Hobbes, he’s special. If Calvin is there, Hobbes is too. In each strip, there’s something new every single time. Even the continuation or repeated story arcs like the camping trips always have some new adventure Calvin and Hobbes to go on. The strip can get very repetitive because the same formula is used for most of the strips. Something happens in Calvin’s life, he rants, then him and Hobbes do something fun, repeat. But somehow, the strip never gets old.

Watterson put a new spin on comic strip humor, straying away from the normal joke and clear punchline to more ambiguous, advanced humor. Some of the comics have fleshed out jokes revolving around Calvin ranting about taxes or the economic and political state of the world. As readers grow older, the more complicated and advanced humor begins to make more sense.  But for the younger readers of the series who may not understand the jokes, the strip still captivated them with its eye-catching artstyle. 

The art style of this series is nothing short of amazing. The watercolour artstyle made it stand out against other Sunday color comic strips. It was part of Watterson’s craft, and the meticulous tone and color choice gave it a bold, yet simple and mellow look. Even the Monday-Saturday black and white ink style made Watterson’s stories pop: strokes were heavily bolded and emphasized giving it life that other strips didn’t have. 

Watterson ended the strip in 1995. He wanted to end the series when the quality of the strip was still “outstanding.” He gave the comic an almost poetic ending. It ends the same way it begins: Calvin and Hobbes riding on a mountain as they embark on another endless adventure.

“I think [Project Canis is] really cool because there’s a lot of dogs in shelters, and a lot of the time the shelters don’t have the resources to be able to provide them the enrichment that they need,” Nishi Mukkara ‘26 said. “I think it’s really helpful for people like us to come together and try to give these animals a better life.”

Having many leftover t-shirts from a previous event and retired clubs, the officers decided it would be a perfect opportunity to use recycled material in order to craft a new volunteering opportunity that aligned with the club’s goal of incorporating more in person events.

“This year we’re trying to implement more in-person events rather than virtual events,” Community Service Representative Sahana Sakthivelmoorthy ‘26 said. “[Rather than] just making a card and taking a picture, we actually want to have club members to directly be involved.”

This change has been looked upon by club members positively, as they look forward to the incorporation of more in-person events.

“[I like more in-person events] because you’re more involved in your community and what you’re doing rather than doing something online,” Mukkara said. “It makes you really feel like you’re making a difference in the world around you.”