Bands May Get Small-Venue Gig at Sydney Games

After a year of planning, practicing and scraping together funds, a group of 500 Orange County band students is discovering that their Olympic dreams may amount to nothing more than that--dreams.

Precision stepping and playing earned the young musicians a coveted invitation to play in the opening ceremonies of the 2000 Sydney Olympics. For 10 glorious minutes, they were to lead athletes from around the world into the main stadium before popping flashbulbs and a roaring crowd. But Australian outrage about foreigners from the United States and Japan filling most of the 2,000 band slots caused Olympic organizers to yank the invitation two weeks ago.

Now Olympic organizers and band directors from the San Diego area and three high schools in Orange County--Irvine High, John F. Kennedy High in La Palma and El Dorado High in Placentia--are playing a diplomatic duet. They’re trying to craft a compromise that won’t wound the host country’s national pride or break the hearts of foreign teenagers.

Trumpeter Katie Bennett, a 12-year-old La Palma resident, can only hope that negotiations half a world away won’t scuttle her 10 minutes of fame.

To raise $3,500 each, Katie, her two older brothers and their parents have curtailed their entertainment and dining expenses. Brother Paul, 18, even passed on a chance to start Boston College this fall, opting instead for community college so he could easily attend pre-Olympic practices.

“We’ve all had these hopes of going to another country and playing before millions of people,” Katie said. “How exciting is that for someone in the eighth grade? Yanking it away is just kinda mean.”

At meetings Thursday and Friday, the committee that uninvited the students offered them a consolation prize: the chance to play at smaller venues, such as preliminary soccer matches in Canberra. But the opening ceremonies are off-limits, they reiterated.

“They are still invited to be involved in the Olympic Games, but to play at several different locations,” said Greg Thomas, a spokesman for the Sydney Organizing Committee of the Olympic Games. “No, it would not be in the opening ceremony. The [organizing] board has made that decision. . . . The kids are still welcome, and we hope they will still come and participate in the Games.”

Despite the disappointment, band directors have told Australian media that a compromise might be possible. The band directors and officials from the company organizing the band, World Projects Corp., were in Sydney, where they could not be reached for comment.

The 1,500 foreign band members--from Georgia, California and Japan--will not officially decide whether to accept the conciliatory invitation until later this month, when their band directors return. But some at home opine that second-prize in Sydney may not be worth missing school and paying about $3,500.

Incoming Irvine High sophomore Stephanie Chan, 14, traded her flute for a trumpet for the chance to play in opening ceremonies.

“They said we could play in some other thing--at a tennis match or something--but that’s not as special, not as big. People aren’t counting on you in the same way,” she said. “I think I’d rather not go if it’s just that.”

In the meantime, band boosters on this side of the Pacific are bombarding the Australian embassies and consulate with calls, letters and e-mails. Similar dispatches were sent to President Clinton.

The American response pales to that Down Under, where the Great Band Debate received far more attention than the Olympic bribery scandal.

Initially, Australians were outraged that their musicians didn’t have a bigger role in the band (their limited involvement was largely because they are not accustomed to American-style marching). Australian radio shock jocks accused event planners of succumbing to Western culture at the expense of Aussies. For weeks, the band debacle has made daily news on talk radio and in the Sydney Morning Herald and the Australian newspapers.

Now that the invitation has been revoked, Australian sentiment appears to have shifted, as the public learns how much planning and expense the foreign band members had poured into this event. An Internet poll in one newspaper asking whether the initial invitation should be honored has received more than 1,000 hits so far (59% in favor of allowing the Americans and Japanese to play in opening ceremonies, 31% disagreeing and 10% expressing no preference). The Irvine High School Web site has even received missives of support from Australians.

The American kids find themselves strangely disenfranchised in the discussion.

So they go on with their lives. They practice their instruments. Visit their friends. Toil at their jobs and wait for word from abroad.

Kennedy High incoming senior Anthony Morfa is spending his vacation answering phones and filing paperwork at summer school to earn a few dollars. Just in case.

“I based my summer on making money for this trip,” said Anthony, the 17-year-old co-president of Kennedy’s award-winning Shamrock Regiment. “Now, I probably can’t go. But I can’t tell [my bosses] that I’m not going to meet my prior commitments.”

Now, he’s watching and waiting--and hoping Australians likewise live up to the agreements they’ve made.