This year, Edina High School is launching a new program called Edina Committed. According to senior Mark Bryan, who is one of the four students who started the program, Edina Committed “is aimed at helping students and athletes reach their full potential through information on nutrition, sleep, leadership, and harmful substances. The program focuses on the positives of being committed to this lifestyle rather than an ineffective ‘don’t do it’ campaign.”

Bryan continued, “We started Edina Committed because we think it’s the next step for Edina High School athletics and activities and it’s an original take on an existing problem. We go to school in a community that values academics, athletics, the arts, and activities and this is one of the reason why we’ve had so much success in these areas. Edina Committed seeks to further grow our awesome programs.”

Football, Girls’ Hockey, Girls’ Basketball, Baseball, and the Marching Band will be implementing Edina Committed this year. The captains (or Drum Majors, in the case of band) will be heavily involved in encouraging participants to remain sober. Coaches will also be involved, but they believe the message will be better received when coming from student leaders. “Hopefully this will be a good thing for the band not as much because it will change the lifestyle of students already involved, but [because] it will let them become examples for their fellow classmates. It’s not as much… what Edina Committed can do for the band, it’s more of what the band can do for Edina Committed. Basically it would be putting a seal of approval on the Band department for other organizations to see that says ‘Edina Marching Band is Edina Committed’ and hopefully, through enough positive peer pressure, can start to impact the rest of the student body,” said Drum Major senior Jack Halverson.

In order to be properly trained, seniors Nick Mertes, Emily Eide, Shannon Good, and Bryan, traveled with Dr. Locklear this summer to Lake Placid, NY. There, they attended a seminar led by John Underwood, an Olympic trainer and the founder of Life of an Athlete, which Edina Committed is modeled after. He shared studies with them concerning the effects of substances on body systems and athletic performance. Bryan remarked, “One of the most staggering things he learned from his research is that it takes the body up to fourteen days to get back to the performance level after one night of binge drinking — essentially, one night of binge drinking negates fourteen days of training. These facts are incredibly relevant to committed athletes and can also apply to students in general.”