LIHU‘E — About half of the music students who signed up for the 2005 All-Kaua‘i Rose Bowl band rolled up their sleeves, limbered up their muscles, and took the first step towards the eventual goal of ending up in the
LIHU‘E — About half of the music students who signed up for the 2005 All-Kaua‘i Rose Bowl band rolled up their sleeves, limbered up their muscles, and took the first step towards the eventual goal of ending up in the Tournament of Roses Parade in Pasedena, Calif. early next year.
Coming off a day of washing cars at Kukui Grove Center Saturday, the students took part in a Run of the Roses jog-a-thon, where they were to walk, run, jog, or do whatever it took to complete 20 laps at Vidinha Stadium, or however many laps they could finish in an hour.
Students jogged, students walked, students shuffled, and while they did their stint on the dirt track, bystanders calculated that 20 laps equates to roughly five miles.
When the students finally land in Pasadena, their route will be approximately seven miles in the Tournament of Roses Parade that is the nationally televised prelude to the Rose Bowl college football game on Jan. 1.
With that realization, the bystanders sighed in relief, their thoughts of too much work waylaid.
Committee members for the band manned tables leading to the track, tabulating the amounts raised by the students in preparation for the trip.
Liz Hahn, a committee member who will have two sons going on the trip, estimated that if they (her sons) make the entire distance in the run, they will have raised about $600.
Parents were estimating that it would take approximately $1,500 per student for the 300-student contingent to get to California, and Larry McIntosh, the band’s director as well as bands director for Kaua‘i High School, said that following the appearance of their story in the newspapers, donations have started to trickle in from Internet readers.
The band maintains a Web site potential donors can access and donate to the students’ efforts via charge cards.
Students from six Kaua‘i schools, three middle and three high schools, make up the musical entourage that will be joined by other students, notably cadets from both Waimea and Kapa‘a JROTC programs who form the Warrior corps that encompasses Polynesian dancers coordinated by kumu hula Wallis Punua.
Additionally, there will be more fund-raisers, car washes, and other fund-raising efforts for the group that will leave in late December.
Sports Editor Dennis Fujimoto may be reached at 245-3681 (ext. 253) or mailto:dfujimoto@pulitzer.net.
