MORGANTOWN — Laughter erupted from the Morgantown High School kit-chen Monday as several volunteers made meatballs for the annual spaghetti dinner in efforts to raise funds for the Mohigan band.
Parents, grandparents and students worked together to make the evening a success. Racks of meatballs cooled by the oven as volunteers worked diligently to create about 2,000 meatballs.
“This is still my first tray, I’m new at this,” joked Richard McGee, grandparent to one of the MHS band students.
Wearing plastic gloves and a hairnet, McGee and others got to work as meatballs baked in the oven behind them.
“See, they’ve already got their’s in the over and I’m still on my first tray. It takes me a while,” he said.
The spaghetti dinner has been a staple as an MHS band fundraiser for nearly four decades. Every year, meatballs are made fresh and hand-rolled. The volunteers also make gallons of sauce, and each person attending the dinner will get spaghetti and meatballs, a salad, rolls, and if that’s not enough, a cupcake for dessert. They typically go through 100 pounds of spaghetti for the event.
Diners can eat-in or carry-out from the MHS cafeteria, but if you’re on-the-go or in a hurry, band students will gladly take your order car side and bring dinner out to you.
Last year, they traveled to Pearl Harbor. Generally, the fundraiser goes toward things like uniforms and bus trips for the 230 student musicians when the band travels to nearby parades, like the Buckwheat Festival, in Kingwood, or Strawberry Festival, in Buckhannon. This year, the band will travel to Virginia for the Virginia Arts Festival in the spring.
Rachel Howard, a junior clarinet player, had a chance to travel with the band, as well as play concerts and compete again-st other bands.
Howard enjoys working as a team with her fellow bandmates, as well as the music they get to play. She worked quickly to make meatballs alongside the others, the lone student in this vast operation. She reflected optimistically about what fundraisers do for her and her bandmates.
“It’s nice because there’s usually a good turnout for the spaghetti dinner, and helping with it is really nice, and it gives the band fundraising opportunities so we can go do cool memorable things,” she said as she rolled another meatball.
