On the two and a half hour bus ride home from Bridgeport, Conn. Saturday, members of the Oliver Ames High School marching band could have kept driving for days if it meant they could continue to savor the moment.

OA won first place for Division IIIA in the United States Scholastic Band Association New England Championships.

"It was great," Oliver Ames Band Director Rob Wheeler said. "They were excited about their championship and all of the hard work. It’s great because not only did they win our division, but what’s really impressive is out of the 17 bands from Division I through Division VI, we actually got the highest score out of any band – some of them that were twice our size."

OA's 64-member band competed against two other schools in its division Saturday: Lyman High School in Wallingford, Conn. and West Hill High School in Stamford, Conn.

The competition was the fourth and final USSBA competition OA competed in this fall season, and it was also OA's fourth victory.

"I’ll attribute it to their hard work and dedication to their training," Wheeler said. "They rely on the fundamentals and the foundations of what we teach here in the music program."

Wheeler said the program has grown in the six years since he has been there. Earlier this season, the band won a Massachusetts Instrumental Choral and Conductors Association gold medal at the MICCA state finals in Lowell - the highest honor a marching band can earn.

"I’ve been able to watch the progression of the program as we go through that and that’s really exciting to watch to see that kind of stuff," he said.

While Saturday's victory ended the competition season for OA, the Tigers will make an appearance at Friday's Veterans Day Parade, the Brockton Christmas Parade (which OA has also won two years in a row) and the Memorial Day Parade.

In May, OA was also hand-selected by Senator John Kerry to represent Massachusetts in the Memorial Day Parade in Washington D.C. The event will be broadcast on Fox and is an honor only given to one Massachusetts School.

For Wheeler, and his heavily decorated OA squad, it isn't all about winning.

"What I always tell them is, if you work hard and if you achieve at a high level, good things happen for you," he said. "So if you’re shooting for winning, that’s not the thing we want to aim for. We want to aim to play the best we can and march the best we can with the best precision. Typically when we do stuff like that and you rise to that high level, winning kind of comes with us."