Norman's Elanderi Steyn: Norman High Driven Student of the Month – presented by Landers Auto

Written by John Tranchina

For Elanderi Steyn, playing multiple musical instruments in different aspects of the Norman school band takes a major commitment, but she enjoys it very much.

“When I play in concerts, usually I play saxophone, but I’m also involved in flute choir and other things, because I also play flute,” Steyn said. “I’m also orchestra, and I hope to continue playing the viola.”

The band is as much a team atmosphere as any sports team is.

“I love band, it’s a great community to be in,” she said. “In high school, it’s like 170 kids, and especially during football season when you’re in marching band, we’re all on like one big team, so you get really close to the people and you travel together to contests and stuff, so you live on buses together for days, and you wake up together for 7 A.M. rehearsals when it’s freezing cold, but it’s a lot of fun.”

When football season is over, the marching band dissolves and breaks up into smaller band subsets, but it’s still just as enjoyable.

“After football season, which ends about a quarter of the way through the school year, we audition for concert band,” Steyn said. “That’s what we’re in for the remainder of the school year. This year, we switched to three concert bands, so we have concert band, electronic band and then wind ensemble, and we also go to contests in the springtime.”

With all the time commitments that the band takes up, it can sometimes be a challenge to get all of her schoolwork done, but Steyn manages to find a way.

“It’s just about compromise and time management, especially band, which takes up the majority of my time outside of schoolwork,” she said. “That’s also like my social group or my social time, so I find that a lot of the band events that I’m required to go to, it’s fun because I get to hang out with friends. It’s all about multi-tasking and making compromises here and there to fit everything in, but it hasn’t been that big of an issue.”