"It was so much fun. It was really cold, though," said majorette Alexandra Pluta via cellular phone to The Maui News yesterday. "Everyone was freezing. (But) it was really, really fun."

"They performed so well. It was just great. It couldn't have gone better," said Barb Newton, president of the band boosters.

But the cold was getting to everyone.

"Oh my God. It was 41 degrees at the game last night. We were the Lahainaluna popsicles. I kid you not, it was cold," Newton said.

Music director Myron Carlos said other bands and students from across the country who performed said they also couldn't take the cold weather.

Around 50 Lahainaluna students, backers and chaperons, including band members and color guard made the five-day trip to San Diego.

On Thursday morning, the band marched in the Port of San Diego Big Bay Balloon Parade, which is also known as "America's Largest Balloon Parade" where there were crowds of more than 100,000.

The band played the march "Hawai'i" and got shaka signs from the crowd, said Carlos. And, the crowd that lined the street also loved it when the band yelled out "aloha."

The parade could be seen back at home on television yesterday morning on the USA Network, much to the delight of Lahainaluna families and friends on Maui.

Newton said her sister, who lives in San Diego, saw the parade live on television and told Newton that the band sounded really good and commentators had said nice things about Lahainaluna over the air.

Newton said that by yesterday morning she had already received calls from Maui residents who saw the parade on TV.

"About an hour a ago, I got a call from one of the (student's) moms. She was all choked up," Newton said.

During halftime of the Holiday Bowl on Thursday night, Lahainaluna along with 14 other high school bands from across the country played for the crowd. The show included fireworks as the bands played.

In the Holiday Bowl, Texas beat Arizona State 52-34.

Carlos said his students performed with 1,500 other high school students before a crowd of around 60,000 spectators at Qualcomm Stadium. The trip was a great learning experience for the students who got to learn what it was like to play with a large band, he said.

"The kids were exposed to a lot of things I know they weren't aware of," he said.

Yesterday, some students went shopping while others rested in their hotel rooms. The group was going to have dinner at Dave & Busters last night and visit Sea World today. The band is expected to return to Maui tomorrow.

This was the first out-of-state trip for the band under Carlos, who has been music director for seven years.