Band trip steals basketball squad’s thunder
Usually when you hear about extracurricular programs at Wisconsin high schools having to make tough decisions, you’re talking about entire band or sports programs getting cut. But South Shore High School – way up in the tippy tip of northern Wisconsin – faced a diffident kind of challenge.
The Port Wing-based school’s girls basketball team has miraculously won their regional basketball championship, sending them to the WIAA Division 5 sectional semifinal. It was your basic story of a tiny town’s high school sports team on their way to going all the way. However, the South Shore High School Cardinals will be cheering on the team they beat – the Mellen Granite Diggers – whom will actually be competing in the semifinal.
Why? A band trip. From JSOnline.com ...
The fierce Dancing CardinalIn a high school located on the shore of Lake Superior, where 20 of the 42 students are girls, more than half of the female student population plays basketball. Of the 11 girls on the team, nine also happen to play in the 14-piece band.
Nothing unusual about that, especially in a small school. However, last year when the school made arrangements for a band trip to Seattle, no one thought about the girls basketball championships.
The day of the regional championship - Saturday - was also the day the band left on an Amtrak train for its Seattle trip. Band members had spent much of the school year raising $900 each through spaghetti dinners, cookie sales and silent auctions. The South Shore band joined high school bands from Ely, Minn., and International Falls, Minn., to play at a university in Seattle as well as sightsee this week before returning home over the weekend.
But the Cardinals kept winning ...
Talk about phenomenally bad timing. It was a bitter-sweet decision to stick with the band rather than the basketball squad, but at least the team gets to keep their regional championship plaque. I know a lot of people feel that high school programs like band and theatre often get the shaft compared to their sporty counterparts, but kids need exposure to all of it, and I applaud these nine students so dedicated to both.
