RUMFORD – More than 200 hours of after-school recording, sound engineering, composing and playing paid off for the second year in a row for a group of Mountain Valley High School students.

They won the New England School of Communications audio challenge last week in Bangor, beating out seven other schools from around northern New England for the honor of recording the best engineered song.

“It was an amazing experience,” said Nate Mills, a Rumford senior who plays keyboard.

Mike Prescott, MVHS music teacher, said the boys spent dozens of hours after school constructing the song, experimenting with sound and engineering, tracking, writing lyrics and doing the multitude of things that must be done to get a song recorded.

They didn’t have to write their own song, “Collide,” for the competition, but they did.

Prescott and vocalist Aaron Cayer, a Rumford senior who plans to study architecture next year at Norwich University, brainstormed to come up with the song’s lyrics, while Nate, guitarist and sound engineer senior Kevin Garneau, and one of last year’s competitors and a 2006 MVHS graduate, Byron Glaus, wrote the melody.

Jacob Ledesma, a junior, who only learned of his passion for music a year ago and is taking guitar lessons, also assisted with the engineering of the song.

“It’s fun being able to put stuff together. It’s a sense of accomplishment,” Ledesma said.

Three of this year’s group took part in winning first place last year, Garneau, Mills and Glaus.

It was just by chance that Glaus, who now attends Emmanuel College in sociology, took part in this year’s challenge.

“It was unbelievable, pretty awesome,” he said of his alma mater’s second-time win.

He had stopped by the high school music room to visit while the melody was being written, and helped out. He also plans to return when he has music to record or play or create because he was partly responsible for the school acquiring the studio the group won last year for placing first.

That studio, valued at many thousands of dollars, was used during the recording of this year’s entry, Prescott said.

Garneau plans to attend the New England School of Communications in the fall, where he hopes to major in sound engineering. Mills isn’t sure what he’ll do next year, but music will be a part of whatever he does.

For winning the competition, the school was awarded additional sound recording equipment including a computer, recording software, “and all the bells and whistles that go with it,” Prescott said.

The group performed their winning recording at the spring concert and a school assembly last week.

Both “Collide” and last year’s winning recording, which student’s also wrote, “Time to Go,” will be available for download at iTunes this month.

This year is the second year of the competition, so MVHS is the team to beat.

Madison High School, whose students also wrote their own song, placed second both years.

Prescott, who is also in his second year of teaching at MVHS, said much of the thanks goes to the administration.

“They support this,” he said.