A group of Saline middle school guitar students who wrote a performed an original song have won a contest.

According to USD 305, 13 students in Jesse Smith’s advanced guitar class at Lakewood Middle School wrote a song to submit to the Ad Astra song-writing contest sponsored by the Wichita River Festival. The contest was an opportunity for artists in Kansas to submit an original song with the theme of “uniting to conquer adversity.”

Smith’s students created a song about overcoming last year’s adversity and all of the changes and challenges they had to face. “The idea they wanted to focus on the most was that they never gave up no matter how difficult it seemed,” said Smith.

As a class, students created the music, lyrics, percussion, melodies, and form of the song. They showed teamwork and persistence as they collaborated to write and record their own original composition.

“It was incredible to watch the students create something together and to see their excitement when their ideas became a real song that they had written themselves,” explained Smith. “Some aspects of the song came to the class easily, and some required more discussion and editing, but the students never gave up and completed the project successfully.”

Their song was among the top four chosen from all submissions. The students won a $500.00 award toward the LMS guitar program.