Students seek way forward for co-curriculars as school starts online

Students at Niwot High School returned to school on Tuesday, Aug. 18, albeit through virtual means. And while the academic situation remains uncertain, with potential to add in-person classes at some point, many activities are operating with even less clarity.

Both the St. Vrain Valley School District and the Boulder Valley School District are starting the academic year with 100 percent virtual instruction. Some sports such as tennis and golf are allowed, but with extra precautions.

Many non-athletic activities remain in limbo, awaiting decisions from administrators and regulators on how, or even if, they can happen. Joe Brown, Niwot High School's athletic director, said he understands how frustrating it is for students and the community to ask if an activity can continue, and to get "I don't know" as a response.

"That's not a line I like to use, but in a lot of cases we really don't know," Brown said. "It's put us all on our A-game, trying to expect the unexpected."

That unexpected extends to marching band. With the potential of aerosols coming from so many instruments, it has left many concerned about the risk level of contracting COVID-19 either from being in a band or from watching a band performance. Brown referenced an ongoing study from the National Federation of High Schools on aerosolized particles - those that hang aloft in the air like fog, whether visible or not - that has released some results but is still in progress.

To be safe, this summer's band camp focused less on musical aspects and more on fieldwork, like marching and positioning, as well as team-building. But the fall's plans remain unclear.

"We're still in a holding pattern for most of our activities as we're waiting for more guidance on the state and national level as for what's best practices," Brown said.

Regardless of what the school year brings, students are eager to find ways to make their favorite activities work. NHS senior Grable Howie said he feels that the performing arts have been his home away from home, and it was difficult to adjust as choir and theater had to go online in the spring.

"We were all pretty confused and frightened at that point, but it really became, you can control what you can control, and the other things are out of your hands," Howie said.

In lieu of their spring performances, choir director Laura Walters compiled a "virtual choir" of students from from all four choirs, as well as staff and alumni who wanted to join in. They sang "Omnia Sol," which the Chamber Singers and Evenstar would have sung at the March concert had it not been cancelled. It wasn't the same as being live, but Howie felt it made all the difference.

"It ended up being awesome," Howie said. "No matter what the circumstances were, we were still able to create music."

Last December, Howie competed with Jazz Mueller, another rising Niwot senior, at the Colorado Thespian Convention in Denver. Both were looking forward to taking their duet to the international convention this summer, which would have happened in Indianapolis, Ind. Then COVID-19 hit, pushing it all online. The duo still placed second in the Duet Musical category, but streaming their performance from an iPhone just wasn't the same.

"If we were in person, the fact that we would have been able to perform in front of thousands of people would have meant a lot more to us and felt a lot more accomplished," Mueller said.

Howie hopes the choir and even theater can do more virtual choir work this fall, to try and keep a sense of community and creativity. Still, it won't be what the seniors have looked forward to. Even though they wouldn't happen until spring of 2021, highly-anticipated senior send-off could look very different at best and be cancelled at worst, which Mueller said is "a bummer."

"I know that high school is a small, small portion of my life and what I wanna do, but it would mean a lot if I could get that final senior performance in," Mueller said.

Activities like speech and debate also remain up in the air. The 2020 state tournament was cancelled in March amid COVID-19 closures, just weeks before it would have occurred. NHS competes at festivals, which are different from tournaments, so their team was able to complete the season at the last festival in February before the pandemic hit Colorado.

Ben Goff, a rising senior at Niwot High School, took first place last spring in Public Forum, a partnered style of debate. Even as CHSAA has released a competition calendar for this year, Goff said he's unsure whether their team will actually go to tournaments, even if they want to.

"A lot of us seniors are going into final year of this, at the peak of our ability to be competition towards one another, and given how we're led and how speech and debate tournaments run with being inside and in close proximity, I'm worried that we won't have opportunity to compete this year," Goff said.

Though speech and debate is a class at Niwot, it's primarily student-motivated. Goff said he and his peers are considering shifting their focus to generally improving public speaking skills, as they're necessary for any event, not to mention life in general. He thinks it might be a better use of time than trying to compete in online tournaments, especially for their newer team members.

"[Online] is not what the experience is, and it's going to rob them of that if we pretend that it's exactly like it, because it's not," Goff said.

Like so many students with co-curricular activities, Goff said he feels like the community of speech and debate is one of the most important aspects of being involved, and it's hard to recreate that team atmosphere over a video call. Not that Goff won't be trying, but he's anxious to see how competition will happen for his senior year and his team, if it happens at all.

"It is devastating, but we're in different times, and it's up to the priorities of the leaders that make those decisions," Goff said. "So we're kind of just waiting."