For five Oak Harbor High School seniors, the highlight of attending a Mariners’ game Monday was not Seattle’s 7-5 home-run-filled win over the New York Yankees.

Mikayla Hobbs, Chante Powell, Alex Hartley, Royce Abuda and Jonathan Francisco, all members of OHHS’s Navy Junior Reserve Office Corps, had the honor of presenting the colors for the national anthem before the game.

Marching out in front of a crowd of 30,000 could be a bit nerve wracking, they said, but the fact that they experience performing under pressure for the Wildcat Battalion during ROTC competitions helped quell some of the anxiety.

Oak Harbor High School’s color guard began presenting the American flag at one Mariners’ game per season beginning in 2009. Instructor Chief Bill Thiel heard about other high school units performing the duty and contacted the Mariners about including Oak Harbor. The Wildcats were assigned single games each year until this season when the Mariners offered four slots: June 25, Aug. 1 and 22, and Sept. 6.

Thiel selects five different students to present the colors each time, spreading the privilege around.

When a member of the Wildcat Battalion gets the call from Thiel, he or she considers it a honor, Hartley said.

Oak Harbor is a regional power in ROTC competitions, where the Wildcats go head-to-head with other high school units in events such as precision marching, marksmanship and physical training.

All five of Monday’s color guard are veterans of either the Wildcats’ armed or unarmed drill team and Hartley and Powell double-up as members of the physical training team.

Powell said she was nervous before the national anthem Monday, particularly because she was the first one from the unit to march out onto Safeco Field.

“Once we were out there, it wasn’t too bad,” she said.

In fact, she added, she gets more nervous before the school competitions because of the pressure to continue the tradition of Oak Harbor being the best unit.

“We are always on top of the standings,” Powell said. “We don’t want to be the ones to mess up. We also have to make sure the underclassmen understand that we always get first place.”

Abuda echoed those comments, adding, “We want to make sure Oak Harbor looks good.”

The group said they find the desire to continue as the region’s best unit as motivation to work hard at practice, which means reporting for workouts at 6 a.m. before school each morning.

“We don’t want all that work we put in to go to waste,” Hobbs said.

Regardless, Hobbs said she was nervous about presenting the colors Monday because it was her first time commanding the color guard. She said marching with the armed drill team in competition is never nerve wracking because “muscle memory” kicks in.

Francisco said he really didn’t notice the crowd Monday because he was concentrating on the task.

“I was looking forward to representing Oak Harbor and Chief Thiel, and I knew we would be okay because we practice. Before we went out, I was focusing on that.”

Four of Monday’s color guard plan to make the military a career and continue as drill team members during their college years.

Francisco hopes to receive an appointment to the United States Naval Academy, while Hartley wants to join the Army ROTC unit at the University Washington so he can continue on to the National Guard.

Abuda would also like to go to the UW or a school in California and be part of the Navy ROTC program, and Powell would like to attend the University of Washington and join the Air Force ROTC unit.

The Oak Harbor High School color guard performs at about 80 events a year, according to Thiel.

“We normally perform at Oak Harbor events with a lot of retirements and changes of command at NAS Whidbey,” he said.

For the first time, they will present the colors at the NAS Whidbey Island Navy Ball this year.

“We do all the parades here in town. We are also the official color guard for Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University (Worldwide) graduation ceremony that is held at the Museum of Flight in Seattle in September,” Thiel added.

The Wildcats’ first Embry-Riddle ceremony was in 2009 when Thiel was a member of the graduating class.

Next up for unit is presenting the colors before the Rotary’s challenge series soapbox races Saturday, Aug. 27, in Oak Harbor.

The  Oak Harbor High School program, under the direction of Cmdr. Mike Black and Chief Thiel, has received Distinguished Unit with Academic Honors, the highest NJROTC award, every year since 2005.