Cal Poly students left San Luis Obispo weeks ago with bunches of flowers for the Rose Parade in Pasadena. And they're coming back with some hardware.

Cal Poly's float, a joint project of the Pomona and SLO campuses, won the Founder's Trophy as the best volunteer-built float in the New Year's Day parade. It marks the sixth time in eight years Cal Poly has won an award. Judges hand out about 20 awards to the 49-float field.

Rachelle Kam, the SLO campus' chairwoman, said the dozen Cal Poly SLO students working on the float were happy with the honor.

"It shows our hard work has paid off," she said in a phone interview as the University of Michigan band played loudly in the background. "It was really great to see such a large project going down the parade route."

With this year's theme of "Music, Music, Music," Cal Poly's float depicted a sunken pirate ship with animated sea creatures playing musical instruments. The float, titled "Bob's Barnacle Band," also featured a starfish singer emerging from a large clamshell and a skeleton conducting the band from a crow's nest. An octopus, with eight tentacles playing a piano, was covered in red, bronze, golden yellow and white mums.

While full-time professional float builders dominate the parade, Cal Poly's entry is the only float that is designed, constructed, decorated and financed entirely by a team of students. It's a 56-year tradition for the Cal Poly campuses.

With some 800,000 parade attendees and more than 350 million people watching on TV worldwide, Cal Poly's entry to the Rose Parade marks the highest-profile event of the year for the university. (Too bad Al Roker called the university's home "San Looueee Obispo" on NBC's broadcast.)

The Rose Parade float is a year-long project for the Cal Poly students. Planning for the 2005 parade will begin in just a few weeks.

Each campus works on half the float, until San Luis Obispo's portion is driven to Pomona in early November. San Luis Obispo students have been in Pasadena since Dec. 13 and worked around-the-clock from Dec. 26 up until a few hours before Thursday's parade.

Matthew Wiersma, a mechanical engineering senior from San Luis Obispo, drove the 55-foot-long float along the 5 1/2-mile route. In order to keep the float fully decorated in flowers, Wiersma only had a 2-squarefoot hole to look out, while conventional cars have windshields four times that size.

"There are float liaisons on scooters who direct me where to turn," he said. "It's a really long drive and, at times, very boring. But it's thrilling to hear the crowds."

Wiersma, like a majority of his Cal Poly counterparts, was operating on only a couple hours of sleep, something that is routine during the last week of float preparations.

During a phone interview around 11 a.m. Thursday, shut-eye was very much on his mind.

"It's always a thrill to work on this project," he said. "But I am happy to think ahead to the days when I spend my weekends doing other things -- like sleeping in. I'm going to lunch, and then I'm going to bed."