Decorah High School students take first place in regional music listening contest

Teams from Decorah High School had four out of the five highest finishes at a regional music listening contest Friday afternoon at Winona State University. 

Nearly 120 teams participated in the contest this year, representing 45 different schools, home schools, and private music studios. This was Decorah's first year in the competition and the Decorah students did extremely well.

The Decorah team of Sarah Pedlar, Landon Miller, and Liliana McGohan won the regional competition with a score of 89/100 and will advance to the championship competition held at Augsburg University in Minneapolis on Friday, February 7th.

The Decorah team of Sofie Grouws, Leila Johnson, and Mya Sullivan scored in second place with a score of 77/100, but the rules of the contest state the top two scores from the regional competition advance to the state championship--unless those two scores are from the same school, in which the next highest score from a different school advances.  

Decorah High School had 18 students competing at the regional competition--Ally Bouska, Sophia Christman, Sofie Grouws, Ella Grouws, Lillian Grouws, Jenna Hartz, Maria Hendrickson, Leila Johnson, Ruby Langholz, Liliana McGohan, Landon Miller, Sarah Pedlar, Angel Pena-Rodriguez, William Schwarz, Isaac Roberts, Mya Sullivan, Riley Wilson, and Peter Wilson.  The teams were coached by Matt and Nicole Cody.

The objective of the Music Listening Contest is to inspire students to become lifelong participants in the musical experience.   There were three special focuses of this year's competition--women composers, music inspired by Outer Space, and the music of Mexico.  For more information, visit: www.musiclisteningcontest.com