The Battlefield High School marching band won the national championship for the right to perform as part of the pre-game show tonight during the Allstate BCS National Championship college football game.

Winning the "First Place" plaque at WorldStrides Heritage Performance programs BCS National Championship on Jan. 8, the Marching Bobcats earned the right to appear before a national audience at the NCAA Division I-A title game in New Orleans pitting Louisiana State University against The University of Alabama.

Game time is set for 8:30 p.m. All of the competing bands are set to perform at halftime but Battlefield's victory gives the Marching Bobcats the extra perk of performing before the game.

According to blurbs and images uploaded to the Marching Bobcats Twitter page (@marchingbobcats) on Jan. 8, the band will be "performing not only during halftime but will be in [pre-game] festivities" at the Super Dome in New Orleans, Louisiana.

Another tweet from the Marching Bobcats states that Battlefield will also be holding the "huge American flag" during pre-game festivities at the BCS National Championship.

Bands competed based on class, with Battlefield in the highest one at 3-A. Senior Caroline Shepard, a member of the flag guard, said Battlefield won the class title as well as additional titles for marching, music, general effect and drums. The flag guard took second place in the only team category Battlefield did not win outright.

Senior conductor Glendon Mohan and her second-in-command, junior Liana Smith, won the title of best drum major too.

Overall, the Marching Bobcats received a score of 94 of 100, two points below their season-high of 96.

Battlefield's three-part "Journey Through the Classics" routine has been tweaked throughout the school year, though its core has been kept in tack. A YouTube video of the New Orleans performance hosted by WorldStrides Heritage Performance showed the routine itself, from beginning note to end, clocked in at just over 9 minutes.

"The show was awesome," said Mohan, adding that the team had not had any "full-on rehearsals" since the end of marching season.

She noticed that certain segments of the performance they had specifically targeted for improvement went so smoothly that she "couldn't help but smile," something conductors aren't supposed to do on the podium.

The band performed on Saturday, Jan. 7 and found out the results Sunday night during a reception with the other nine performing acts at The Sugar Mill event hall in the Warehouse District of New Orleans.

"They left us in suspense," said Shepard, recalling how the public address announcers delivered the news. "We were all holding hands."

Senior mellophone player Michelle Hettman said that when the grand champion announcement finally came, "tears just rushed to our eyes.

"It's the most incredible feeling," she said.

Added Mohan, "It was so amazing. I was shaking."

Such a "totally unexpected" win, as Shepard put it, came after much adversity. During the bus trip from Haymarket to New Orleans, one member had a seizure, according to Shepard, and had to go to a hospital in Christiansburg.

Shepard mentioned that director Matt Brodt told Marching Bobcats that "we're family" in deciding that the team would wait at the hospital while the student recovered.

"This is what we do. We take care of each other," said Brodt in an interview.

The student ended up okay in the end and even performed on Saturday.

Also on the way down, one of the buses also had to pull over to a shop for a filter repair. In all, the trip lasted for 24 hours, starting at around 10:15 p.m. in Haymarket on Jan. 5 and ending near 10:30 p.m. Friday in New Orleans.

"There wasn't much to do" on the bus, said Shepard. Movies and iPods served as the entertainment for the entertainers until they finally pulled into town late Friday night.

By Saturday morning, "We were all pretty bad off," said Shepard.

With 168 of the 172 Marching Bobcats making the trip, Brodt gave a pep talk, the band and flag guard entered a small rehearsal room, got dressed up and performed in front of their supporters and two other bands at the Super Dome.

"You take a deep breath and you go, 'Okay, we can do this,'" recalled the senior. Afterward, "We kind of looked around and were like, 'That was a good show.'"

Really good, in fact.

So good, it kept Battlefield's undefeated season intact. That led to a running joke that the Bobcats' home football stadium should be renamed after the Marching Bobcats since their national title now trumps the 2010 varsity football team's state title.

As the big crescendo at the end of the Bobcats' set hit, Shepard pointed out that it's an incredible tense experience that leaves the performers with pride.

"It kind of reminds us why we do this, we we spend hours practicing and perfecting," she said.

Check back online for more updates later and this week's edition of The Gainesville Times for a full recap.