Odem Bands 2020 Update
Greetings,
I hope this message finds you well and that you made it through Hanna without any damage to your homes! I am writing to update everyone on our plans for summer band with the Odem HS Band. In the past week UIL has released some changes for this year that have left us trying to determine our best way forward with beginning this school year. They left the 1A-4A Football dates in place, but changed all conferences of marching band’s dates back six-weeks for the fall.
The immediate impact of this is that our normal date of starting drill of August 1st, has now been moved to September 7th. There will be two football games before we are allowed to begin setting any contest drill. This of course will result in us needing to reorganize our summer band plans. On account of this, instead of starting up with in-person camps this week, we are going to begin having some workouts that we want students to begin doing on their own. Each day we will have a different workout that we want students to complete. I will post those to our website and send links via Remind, Twitter, and Facebook beginning tomorrow.
With assistance from our drum majors we will hopefully get through our fifteen-minute workout we do daily, as well as begin teaching our dance fundamentals through this week. We ask that every student completes the days workout sometime during the day. Beginning the week of August 3rd, we are going to plan on in-person sectionals and fundamentals in the evenings from 6:30pm-8:30pm. The following week we will most likely begin to have some full band rehearsals if we can.
I appreciate your patience in being able to provide you with firm schedules and information. For those of you who have been around the program in the past you know I try and have every little detail scheduled and planned for our season. With COVID, delayed in-person instruction, and UIL stipulations it’s making that very challenging to work with.
With our attempts to plan for the year we understand that many parents may choose to keep their students at home and do virtual learning through the time that is allowed by the State and OEISD. Those students are still able to come to campus and participate in extracurricular activities on campus at this time. Still we also understand the health concerns that families may very well have, and will serve those students who can’t attend in-person classes or rehearsals virtually to the best of our ability as well!
We ask that you please complete this survey so that we can begin to plan instruments and resources that will be needed to safely return. https://forms.gle/M23Wt5yBh6U3WbTm9Our program is looking at several resources to add to our inventory to help aid in our safety protocols. Per a study that was released recently we will be purchasing bell covers and special face masks for every student (Grades 6-12). Depending on the information we receive about shipping of these items we may ask parents help us create temporary bell covers. Until we receive these items we will be rehearsing outdoors as much as possible to allow for any possible infectious particles a better chance to disperse.
Please know that the health and safety of all of our students will always be the primary concern for the Odem Bands! Thank you for your support and understanding of these times. We hope that you all remain well, and look forward to again having performances from The Spirit of OHS in the near future!