The Camden County Board of Education recognized several student achievements at their board meeting Thursday, February 12. Board chair Christian Overton recognized Camden Baxter-Baronas, William Brickhouse, and Daniel Nadj for representing Camden County and The Camden County Bands recently at the NC Bandmasters Association Eastern District All District Band Clinic and Concerts on the campus of East Carolina University.
Camden is a 10th grade student at CamTech High School and William Brickhouse and Daniel Nadj are 8th grade students at Camden Middle School. Over the course of the Fall Semester, the students began preparing for the audition and in January they traveled to Greenville to audition for a panel of adjudicators. During the audition process, the students performed a prepared solo, an assortment of scales, and performed a sight reading example. The sight reading was a piece of music the students had never seen and were only given 60 seconds to prepare before playing.
Once selected, the students returned to Greenville last weekend to rehearse with other selected students from other schools on Friday and Saturday and performed a concert at Wright Auditorium on the campus of ECU on Saturday evening.
The Eastern District Band Association is comprised of all schools East of 1-95 and ranges from the Virginia Border to the Wilmington area. While in attendance at the clinic, ‘the students were able to work with other directors from the region while preparing for the concert.
Cierra Pettus, an 11th grade student at CamTech High School, was also recognized. Cierra was instrumental in the successful launch of CamTech’s newspaper, the Bruin Times. She has assumed a leadership position among the newspaper staff even though many of the staff are seniors. Cierra pushes the other staff members to meet their deadlines and often picks up their duties when they fall behind. Cierra is the biggest advocate of the newspaper and is constantly working to promote it at both CamTech and Camden County High School. CamTech is very proud of the newspaper and is fully aware that it would not be the success it has been without Cierra. In addition to all of her work on the newspaper, Cierra was named a junior member of the Student Teacher Advisory Council. As one of two Student Teacher Advisory Council members, she, along with a group of faculty members, meet monthly with Superintendent Hawkins.
