COLORADO, USA — It’s another setback for students who hoped to find some normalcy when they returned to school this fall.
This week, the Colorado Bandmasters Association announced the competition season is canceled for the 2020 season, citing concerns about COVID-19.
“I think everybody is heartbroken at this point,” said Clay Stansberry, the Band Director at Legacy High School in Broomfield. “We want to [compete], but we want the safety of students and everybody involved. When you go to a marching competition, there’s parents, there’s directors, students, workers. They bring their grandparents, you know. The decision was the right decision to protect everybody involved.”
Stansberry, like other band directors around the state, participated in surveys that helped CBA make a decision. Ken Ovrebo, the CBA Chairperson of Marching Affairs, said they asked band directors about how the virus had affected their individual school district social distancing guidelines, transportation logistics, and band budgets during the upcoming year – and received a variety of different answers and impact levels.
Ovrebo said most band directors wanted CBA to make a final decision about the fall season quickly, by mid-July.
“CBA has been working to determine what options are available to CBA for the fall marching band season. Those options included having normal marching band events, having marching band events without spectators, having virtual marching band events, sending judges to schools to evaluate marching bands, having non-competitive or exhibition marching band events or, finally, cancelling the entire marching season. It was determined that the only option that ensures the health and safety of students, directors, band staff, event workers and judges is cancellation.”
Shelby Opp is a rising senior at Legacy High School and a drum major in the marching band. She learned the news from a friend.
“I was choking back tears,” she said. “You have this build-up throughout high school to your senior year. And band for seniors, especially in our program, is such a big deal… it’s just a let-down.”
“It was just a very hard moment to realize that we wouldn’t get to experience some of the things that seniors in the past years have gotten to experience,” added Avery Dotson, fellow rising-senior and marching band member.
Dotson said she’s part of the band's leadership team, as well as a member of the front ensemble. The students said their marching band has a history of success, with multiple state championship titles.
“We’re a family, essentially. We spend hours upon hours dedicating our lives, we’re there 100% of the time, to this one thing, this one seven-minute show,” she said.
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Stansberry, the band director, said he and other directors are looking for ways to keep the students marching – even without competition. CBA said bands can still gather for practice or performance if they follow local social distance guidelines from their school districts and communities.
“Competitive marching band is canceled, but marching band is not canceled,” Stansberry said. “We’re going to look to try to find some creative ways to make it fun for kids to do something… perform at football games, something in our district, just do something for those kids so they have a memorable experience.”
The students are learning a hard less in resilience. Many have said they understand the decision and support keeping the community safe.
“It does suck to have something taken away from you,” Opp said. “I would rather everyone be healthy and safe than spreading the virus.”
“At the end of the day we’ve had a pretty great three years,” Dotson added. “Its about the journey, its not about the end result. But for everyone in the community, not just us, I think our safety is more important than us getting to have our season. We’ll still get to do something, just not what we thought we would.”
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