High school students will toot their own horns Saturday at band competition.

Show tunes, musical classics and even rock ‘n’ roll will ring out as band members crisply march in their gold braid and plumes. Flag girls will strut right along with them, whirling tall and brightly colored banners as drill teams perform exuberant high kicks.

This razzle-dazzle will unfold for several hours Saturday afternoon at El Camino College, where hundreds of teen-agers in 25 high school marching bands, as well as flag and drill teams, will show off their music and marching routines.

Hosted by Torrance’s West High School, the fifth annual High School Marching Band Tournament begins at 1:45 p.m. Other South Bay high schools that will perform are Palos Verdes, Redondo Union, Hawthorne and Bishop Montgomery, along with schools from as far away as Laguna Beach, Riverside and Thousand Oaks. The various contingents--some with baton-twirling majorettes--will have from 51 to 186 students.

The colorful show is expected to last more than seven hours. The schools will compete for honors in teamwork and musicianship, as well as precision in their various maneuvers. The performers will form arcs and circles, squiggly lines and wedges as they fill the college’s athletic field.

As hosts, the West High students won’t be competing, but they’ll close the tournament with a 15-minute show on a “Lawrence of Arabia” theme. It comes complete with tambourines and the drill team dancing with partners--not real men but the stuffed-dummy variety.

“There’s a lot of rivalry, but they all get along,” said Kathy Chessmore, one of the more than 200 West High parents who are involved in hosting the tournament. “When the bands are in the staging area and are ready to go on, the kids congratulate each other and say good luck.”

But if the youngsters are thrilled just by the competition, West High trumpet player Jennifer Hardy said they also know the audience wants to be entertained. The afternoon “is definitely showy,” she said. “The audience likes when we all march out on the field.

“We put on a real fantastic show, and it’s a nice thing for families to come to. The music is good and it’s all entertaining.”

Between now and the end of the year, there will be several high school marching band tournaments every weekend in Southern California. But the El Camino show--which West High started as a way to raise money for band equipment--is the only one in the South Bay.

Steve Larson, band director at Redondo Union High, said tournaments are high points for his band students, who he said have a competitive spirit.

They enjoy the challenge of “working out complicated field patterns, setting them to music and making it happen,” he said.

And these tournaments are things that the students--and their parents--pursue as though they were an obsession. The bands, along with drill teams and flag teams, drill weekdays at 7 a.m. There are also practices after school, and the routine goes on for weeks and weeks.

Parents see that the uniforms and the tall flags are kept in good order, and on tournament days--which can last from 6 a.m. to 11 p.m.--they travel with the youngsters. Several West High parents spent hours filling the drill team’s dummy partners with plastic shopping bags as stuffing.

Said parent Jean Anderson, who has two daughters in the West High contingent: “You have to have fun doing this or you wouldn’t do it. It’s a big family.”

On tournament day, every visiting school will have a West High parent as host. And because they don’t perform until the end of the show, West students will spend most of the day working--from stamping hands when people enter the college stadium to taking food and soft drinks to the judges. Alumni also pitch in.

During the competition, each school will get 15 minutes on the field to impress the band directors who make up the panel of judges. Bands, flag teams and drill teams will be grouped for judging according to the size of the contingents. In an impressive awards ceremony at the end of the tournament, team captains walk onto the field to a drum cadence under an arch formed by the tall flags.

West High band director Jim Banim said the excitement of the tournament is seeing the youngsters take the field to the cheering of the crowd.

“They really try to entertain the audience,” he said. “When they’re performing, it’s very exciting. Kids need to feel pride in achieving a goal, and this is what this does for them.”