Playing Dual Roles, Simultaneously
By Bonita Wilborn
Garrett Smith, a junior at Plainview High School, is playing dual roles simultaneously. It was recently brought to the attention of Mountain Valley News that we have a junior at Plainview that is actively participating in football and also actively participating in the marching band.
We’ve likely all heard of Dual Enrollment, where high school students take high school courses part of the school day, and then are released to take college courses the remainder of the school day. That helps students who are nearing their required credits for high school to be able to complete those credits so that they still graduate with the classmates they’ve spent all of the high school careers with, but it also helps them to go forward in their college careers by having some of the college credits already completed before they graduate high school.
The word dual means – consisting of two parts, elements, or aspects, so as you can see, a student participating in dual enrollment quite literally consists of two aspects, high school student and college student.
A person that is working two separate jobs would be participating in dual employment. A person that is supporting two separate families and neither knows about the other, is referred to as living a dual (or double) life. Some people have dual talents; still others have dual personalities. Most women have dual responsibilities, such as wife and mother.
Anytime there is a dual aspect in your life, a portion of your life must be devoted to one of the aspects, while another portion of your life must be devoted to the other aspect.
Garrett Smith certainly fits into that “dual” category. Before moving to Rainsville, Garrett attended Emma Sansom School, where he participated in football and band, but that type of dual participation is rare for Plainview. To my knowledge, there has only been one other student in Plainview history that has participated in football and band simultaneously; Zack Stephens, the son of former band director, Matt Stephens, had dual roles as well.
Garrett explained, “When I moved to Plainview, I was only playing tuba in the band. Then last year, I was in Drivers Ed, and Coach Ledbetter was my teacher. He asked me one day if I’d think about playing football.”
As stated above, anytime there is a dual aspect in your life, at times, one must come first part of the time, but the other can’t be totally neglected. It must also be put first some of the time.
For a student to be allowed to participate in both extracurricular activities at the same time, a compromise had to be reached by the heads of those two activities. Coach Nick Ledbetter and Band Director Chris Davis have come up with what seems to be a perfect compromise. During the school day, Garrett participates in football Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays, so that he can be prepared to perform well during the game on Friday nights. On Thursdays, Garrett practices with the band, for the same reason, so that he can be prepared to perform well during the game on Friday nights.
Another compromise that had to be reached by Ledbetter and Davis was that Davis allows Garrett to play on the field with the football team during the game rather than being in the bleachers performing with the band. Davis also had to be willing to allow Garrett to perform during the halftime show while wearing his football uniform instead of the band uniform as the rest of the band is wearing. Ledbetter allows Garrett to perform with the band during halftime rather than going into the field house for the traditional halftime “We’ve gotta do better” speech.
When asked about missing halftime in the locker room with his football teammates, Garrett said, “When there is something specific that Coach Ledbetter needs to talk to me about, he just talks to me on the sideline.”
Garrett was then asked how the football team reacts to him playing in the band. He answered, “I think they’re OK with it, but they don’t even know what instrument I play.”
One thing about this rare situation is the fact that when football season is over, Garrett will still be able to participate with the band during the concert season without football being a factor until next year’s football season starts again.
Mountain Valley News would like to take this opportunity to commend Ledbetter and Davis for working with this talented dual student and allowing him to participate in both activities. I can only imagine how some of the coaches from yesteryear would have reacted to a football player wanting to participate in the band as well. What I imagine is that the student would have been told they would have to choose between the two activities or that even more directly, “If you want to be a football player, you can just forget about band.”
We commend Garrett Smith for taking on this dual role in the activities that are obviously both important to him. After all, he was already participating in band when Coach Ledbetter approached him about playing football. He is setting a great example for his little brothers Gideon and Grayson. If you want something you have to be dedicated.
Lastly, we would also like to commend the football team and the band members for being understanding and realizing that Garrett cannot be in two places at the same time, but he is there for the group as often as he can be. No doubt, he gives 100% to each of the activities.