This Sunday marks a bittersweet time for members of the Bishop Byrne Colleens Alumnae Association — their last march.

The Colleens are set to lead the Motor Parade at 4 p.m. during Mardi Gras Southeast Texas, marking the 21^st and final year for the all-female drum and bugle corps to march together.

Jennifer Rodgers attended the Catholic high school from 1969 to 1972 and was a drum major with the Colleens. She said the group is getting older and made the decision that this will be their last time to march.

“Rather than go out on a bad note, we want to go out on top,” Rodgers said. “There is pride in what we have accomplished.”

Tammy Courville attended BBHS from 1977 to 1981 and was a Colleen, playing the bugle back then. She now plays the tenor drum when marching.

She too finds it a bittersweet time for the women who have marched together in local parades and met for events over the years.

Courville likens it to keeping high school alive.

“Remaining young to when times were carefree and we did not have to be adults and worry about grown up stuff,” Courville said with a laugh. “It (marching) sends us back in time. And the fact that some of us can still march…”

She said there’s just something special — an internal, subliminal thing — about being together marching. The drums, the pace of the parade.

“I’m getting goose pimples just telling you,” she said. “When the bugles kick in. There’s something special about the bugles. The sound they produce.”

The camaraderie is also special to the women. They gather and prayed before they marched and even go to Mass together on the Sunday they march.

When Rodgers thinks of the Colleens as adults she thinks back to the first time they organized and took part in a parade.

“We were basically two blocks long of green and white going down Procter Street,” Rodgers said. “The expressions on people’s faces, it was just amazing.”

She’s always felt a kinship with the Colleens, she said. Growing up with two older brothers, she remembers looking through their yearbooks and seeing the Colleens who came before her.

“Looking at these ladies I’ve never met before then meeting and I’d think I know you. I saw your picture in the yearbook,” she said.

Rodgers gave a shout-out to the Thomas Jefferson High School Red Hussars, whose alumnae association formed several years prior to the Colleens’ alumnae association.

The Colleens took tips from their sister drum and bugle corps, she said.

The group will continue to meet as they have through the years but will no longer march.

Bishop Byrne High School, which was a merger of St. Mary’s and St. James’ high schools, closed its doors in 1983. The Colleens performed in numerous events and even took a trip to Ireland to take part in St. Patrick’s Day festivities.