Lisa Waller stood nearly still, fiddling with the keys on her alto sax.

She and the rest of her Baileyville B&B High School marching band had about a half-hour before they began their slow march down Massachusetts Street, and only two songs to play when they got there.

“Come On Over Baby” and “Soul Bossa Nova.” Not too hard, right?

But Waller said in the moments before the annual high school band march she was nervous and excited.

“It’s seeing people cheer for you, knowing people like how you play,” she explained.

But excitement swirled with flashes of fear: Tripping over your own feet, forgetting how to play a song.

At Saturday’s Kansas University Band Day, more than 30 area high school bands took to downtown, nervous or not, and played school fight songs and band classics to a blockslong, cheering crowd.

Brenda Sampson and her son Adam Sampson, 6, at right, watch drummers march by in the Kansas University Band Day Parade on Massachusetts Street. More than 30 area high school marching bands participated in KU's 59th annual Band Day on Saturday.

Most of the bands – from McLouth, Ottawa, Tonganoxie and elsewhere across the state – would then go on to perform four songs during halftime of the KU-University of Louisiana-Monroe football game Saturday night.

For some, such as Free State High School trombone player Lydia Belcher, the pressure lingered in the back of their minds.

“What if I forget the whole thing?” she said of the Free State band’s fight song. “We’re doing this from memory.”

Others shrugged and said the day was no big deal; this was certainly not their first parade.

“I’ve been in a lot of parades before,” said Maddie Endicott, a piccolo player from Columbus Unified High School. “It’s no big deal.”

Those were apparently the kind of musicians some KU band players were hoping to scope out.

Allison Ramos, left, Olivia Quina and Olivia Bolbridge scream and dance as the Kansas University marching band starts the parade Saturday afternoon on Massachusetts Street. The girls are from Brownie Troop 86 at Lawrence Catholic School.

Before the march, clarinet rank leader Laura Draxler walked up to a circle of her band buddies, who were singing and hopping around in a circle, laughing the laugh of small children.

For the KU marchers, Draxler said, nerve-racking wasn’t the right way to describe it.

“It’s our nap time,” she said.

Nervousness wasn’t common among these marchers.

But they also want to see what some of the high school marchers can do – see if they have the right stuff.

“This is like recruiting,” KU band member Kate Pommerenke said, “to get them psyched for college band.”

But nervous or not, the crowds lining Massachusetts Street could hardly tell. Packed in the open backs of minivans and SUVs, they cheered for college and high school musicians alike.