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An EF-1 tornado ripped through Ada, Oklahoma early on Tuesday, March 4, that caused a good bit of damage, but one thing that didn’t happen there was a scheduled district band competition for schools later that day. The two-day event leading up to state concert band competitions was almost cancelled entirely until the Ardmore High School band director rallied the troops and salvaged that competition.

“We emailed the parents, I don’t know, 20 times on Tuesday. ‘Hey, this isn’t happening. We’re trying to see what the alternative is.’ ‘Hey, this is kind of the plan, we’re trying to flesh things out.’ It was like every hour, every other hour, every 30 minutes, another email,” said John Moreno, the band director at Ardmore High School.

He got news of the tornado as soon as he woke up that morning, and word quickly spread among the social network of band directors of Oklahoma that a school in Ada had been damaged and that the first day of the competition was cancelled.

Moreno knew that it would be really disappointing for many of his high school students to miss the opportunity to punch a ticket to state, but it was his class with middle school students early in the day that really got the ball rolling.

“As middle school band was wrapping up, they we’re like ‘are we going to get to go play,’” Moreno said. He saw the disappointment that the group would miss the final competition of the year and knew that something had to get done.

So he got started figuring out how the should could go on. He knew a state official had recently toured the Westheimer Performing Arts Center as a possible site for future events, so Moreno’s first call was to the director of the performing arts center.

“He said ‘yeah, if it’s for the kids, we want to make sure they get to play,’” Moreno said. Then he made a call to the school superintendent who gave Moreno his blessing as long as it was beneficial to students.

And then Moreno realized he needed some sound dampening for some rooms and called the maintenance department, which dropped what they were doing to help the band director on short notice.

“They had a crew there with carpet squares,” Moreno said. A call to transportation yielded similar results, with staff telling Moreno that they would figure out how to bus middle school students to the performing arts center.

And then he made even more calls.

“It was basically just phone calls until the school got out,” he said.

In the end, Moreno and Ardmore City Schools were able to completely relocate a two-day event in about 24 hours for 23 schools and countless students from across Oklahoma. Instead of a Tuesday and Wednesday event, Tuesday’s event just got moved to Thursday.

The competition relocation relied heavily on students, too. Moreno said he got some of his best students to help direct visiting bands and usher guests on the first day of competitions Wednesday, and then a second group of students did the same thing on Thursday.

As it turns out, rescheduling the competition and relocating it to Ardmore gave students in both middle school and high school a chance to also show off their musical chops.

The Ardmore Middle School Band earned superior ratings on both stage and sightreading and took the Outstanding Achievement Award, which is the highest OSSAA award a middle school band can receive. THe Ardmore High School Band earned straight ones for their superior rating on stage, and another superior rating in sightreading, qualifying those Tigers for the State Concert Contest next month.

For Moreno, he knew that his students had what it takes to perform the music. What impressed him the most may have been the attitude of students, colleagues and other faculty members with Ardmore City Schools.

“Things went smoothly, they took care of business,” Moreno said. “I’ve always said ‘if it’s for the good of the kids, we’re going to get it done and we’re going to make it happen.’ Me and my staff have always been that way, but the district really proved that day that’s the priority.”