RRHS alumna performs in Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade

NEW YORK — When Rio Rancho High School alumna Victoria Phillips flew on an airplane for the first time last week, she thought to herself: “There is no turning back.”

And for good reason.

In a few days, Phillips, 18, would perform at the 2025 Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade as a member of the Northern Arizona University Lumberjack Marching Band. It marked the first time a college or university band from the Grand Canyon State participated in the event in its 99th year, a Macy’s news release said.

“Getting on that plane, I think it really set it into my mind that this is real and I am going to New York and in the next two days, I’m going to be playing in this parade,” Phillips, an NAU freshman, said.

Phillips, who plays mellophone, was surprised she and more than 200 of her bandmates were only given two 15-minute rehearsal times away from the actual parade route — and doing it all while wearing ponchos in the freezing rain.

On Thanksgiving Day, which saw clear weather, the band had to be up and in uniform by 2:30 a.m. before heading to the parade route.

“(Being) sleep deprived at Macy’s is a whole other ‘Wow!’” Phillips said. “You’re eating breakfast and you’re sitting there watching all the advertisements on the billboards for Macy’s; turkeys (are) everywhere, brown (and) white decorations.”

At 5 a.m., Phillips and the band made it to the parade route, where they could not take any pictures. But, Phillips said, she will never forget seeing the infamous floats she had long seen on television.

“It’s so gorgeous,” Phillips said. “There’s so much detail that you miss on TV; they’re very shiny floats. We’d try to take pictures and (organizers) would say, ‘No, stop! You need to keep going to the front.’”

The band pre-taped a segment with actress Cynthia Erivo, star of the hit movie “Wicked.” The segment played at the start of the program while parade participants went to their assigned spots in the procession.

Watching Erivo perform captivated Phillips, but she and her band mates still had frigid weather to contend with.

“The more the sun rose, the colder it got,” Phillips said. “I (could) not feel any of my toes.”

When the parade began at 8:30 a.m., Phillips — former president of her high school marching band — had butterflies in her stomach.

“I was so nervous,” Phillips said.

She remembered “staring at the back of my friend’s head” when her band director exclaimed to his students that if they looked up, they were in for quite a sight.

“’There are people hanging out their windows to see you,’” Phillips recalled her band director saying.

Phillips, who memorized her music, told herself that even though she was nervous it was “OK to take this in.”

What she saw was “magical” — thousands of people in skyscrapers recording the parade on their phones; children sitting on their parents’ shoulders; chants of “GO, NAU!”

But one sighting meant the world to Phillips — a sign that read, “Blessings from New Mexico.”

“I said, Wow! This is so magical. It was like a different world,” Phillips said.

She couldn’t remember getting the feeling back into her toes, but she does remember feeling “very comfortable and welcomed” from the crowd.

In return, the Lumberjack Marching Band made the crowd go wild. They sang along as the band played the “Ghostbusters” theme and Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance.”

When the parade was over, Phillips “felt like crying — in a good way.”

“I was filled with so much emotion, it was hard to comprehend,” she said.

Phillips, a music education major, wants to be a best-selling writer and continue to perform once she graduates from NAU.

For now, her participation in the parade “makes me count my blessings.”

“After this experience, if I stay true to myself, success is bound to follow,” Phillips said.