THOUGHTS FROM OUR HEAD OF SCHOOL, JOSEPH VORBACH:
On Monday of this week, the Executive Board of the Student Council Association and the Superdance leadership team of committee chairs and co-chairs, put on the Superdance Assembly, the essential preparatory event designed to ramp up the community, particularly the student body, for the work that must be done to have a successful Superdance on Saturday, March 30. They did a remarkable job -- the assembly was thematically sound, personal and compelling, and left no doubt of its purpose -- to inspire, for the 44th year in a row, a commitment by Bishop O'Connell students to make a collective difference in the search for a cure for cystic fibrosis (CF).
An email I received after the assembly from an alum contemporary of mine said it well:
I'm sorry I waited until now to attend one of these amazing productions, but I'm so grateful I attended today's! It was an incredible testament to the talented, creative, generous students O'Connell is developing with hearts focused on faith and service.
It was great to hear the Superdance history retold and be reminded once again how deep the roots of this tradition are.
Great care has been taken over the years to capture as completely as possible the story of why we have a Superdance, how the O'Donnell family's story inspired it, how it was done in the early days, and how it has contributed over the years to growing life expectancy for those who suffer from the disease. Each year, those living with CF provide personal testimonials about living with the disease and these stories, sometimes told by O'Connell alumni or by teenagers with CF whose hopes and dreams mirror those of our students, are the most compelling moments of assembly.
As advances in mobile phone cameras and video editing software progress, the assembly becomes more sophisticated and impressive. I went to the SCA office after the assembly to congratulate our student leaders and we talked about the technical sophistication of the assembly. The SCA leaders were quick to credit those on their team whose video editing skills were essential to the crispness and quality of the event.
And so the countdown clock is now running and there are 23 days remaining until our 12-hour Superdance event. The theme is musically focused on the sound tracks that O'Connell students have danced to over the decades -- "Band Together for the Cure." SCA President Christina Fomunyoh laid down the challenge -- to raise $200,000 to benefit cystic fibrosis research. It is a great Lenten challenge for our community and I look forward to watching our student body accomplish that goal with our support.
Please keep all of them in your prayers as they pursue this worthy objective, and read much more about Superdance at www.superdance.org.