View From My Window

ISAS Festival Returns; SPC Makes Crucial Pivot

At Fort Worth Country Day, we prepare our graduates to be successful in life. Success often means being able to both compete and collaborate. Each of our three A’s – academics, arts and athletics – involves competing and collaborating. We can all be proud of FWCD’s ability to provide opportunities for growth in both areas, competing in a business world, a courtroom, or an audition; collaborating as a part of a surgical team, a cast, or a faculty.

Much of that pride is based on our more than 50-year involvement in two wonderful organizations, the Independent Schools Association of the Southwest (ISAS), our accrediting organization, and the Southwest Preparatory Conference (SPC), our athletic conference.

ISAS sponsors the Arts Festival that, over its five decades, many of our Upper School students have participated in and just as many have benefited from. The ISAS Arts Festival last convened in Spring 2019 at Casady School in Oklahoma City, a 50th-anniversary celebration. COVID-19 forced cancellation of the 2020, ’21 and ’22 festivals, making it all the more thrilling to officially share that the ISAS Arts Festival will be back in April 2023.

The Arts Festival is a fantastic example of collaboration. No awards are given. Rather than competing for ribbons, schools attend each other’s performances, view each other’s art, celebrate fellow artistic creators, and attend workshops together. No schools are competing for their improv group or their jazz ensemble to be rated higher than another school’s. Rather, ISAS remains committed to being a true celebration of the arts.

SPC, on the other hand, is all about competition. Our students always have and always will benefit from knowing that there is a real prize for which they are competing each season. As of early June, after years of efforts, the heads of the SPC schools agreed to a significant shift that will align SPC’s season-ending tournaments to have large schools (4A) and small schools (3A) competing for different championships. This is not the old SPC “Division I and II.” With the expansion of 3A/4A from football and lacrosse to all sports that have at least 12 teams competing, FWCD athletes will begin each season knowing they have a real chance of being crowned 3A/4A champions. With the Houston schools growing to over 600 and up to 800 upper school students, and with many schools like ours remaining below 400, this separation for the championship weekend became imperative: Competition is great. Competition on a level playing field is best. Starting in the 2022-23 school year, every SPC school competing has a realistic chance of winning.

We can be grateful for our artists and our athletes and all that they do, under the guidance of their teachers and coaches, to make us proud at both the ISAS Arts Festival and the SPC Championships. From my window, I look forward to seeing more 3A championship banners and more jamming on Trustees Plaza. Academics will always be the “A” in the largest font at FWCD, and it will always be thrilling when the arts and athletics are showing up in bold print.

Go Falcons!

Eric Lombardi