LOCATION AND CONTACT INFORMATION

Sweet Briar College's campus is a hive of activity in June and July, thanks to the sports camps, teacher conferences and other summer programs that have long had a home here. Lately, Blue Ridge Summer Theatre Festival thespians have joined the throngs.

But this year both the tempo and the volume will rise noticeably when Mid-Atlantic Camps arrives for the first time. The Richmond-based company has chosen Sweet Briar as the new base for its summer band camps, after leaving its home of 32 years at Ferrum College.

About 1,200 campers and 45 staffers will stay at Sweet Briar for five-day sessions over four weeks from July 13 to Aug. 11. Each of the sessions - Band Front Camp (color guard, drum major and drum line sections), Middle School Concert Band Camp and three Marching Band Camps - conclude with final exhibition performances that are open to the public.

Sweet Briar auxiliary services director Steve Edwards anticipates the camps will increase the College's summer programs revenue by an estimated $500,000 over the length of the three-year contract he negotiated with Mid-Atlantic.

Similarly, camp director Dwight Leonard believes their presence will provide a local economic boost. Parents dropping off and picking up their children will shop and dine nearby, and what his staff and clients can't find on campus they will purchase from area merchants, Leonard said. He told the Franklin News-Post in a July 25, 2008, story that Mid-Atlantic spent more than $5 million in the local economy and at Ferrum when the camps were based there.

Leonard said the move to Sweet Briar came after Ferrum realized it could no longer host the camps because of enrollment growth and scheduling conflicts. He said there is no animosity about the change, just sadness over the end of a fruitful relationship and leaving behind the staff and administrators who had become longtime friends.

Sweet Briar wasn't an automatic choice, however, and the deal almost didn't happen. Leonard had scouted the College and numerous other campuses for a year without finding a new home for the camps. He was on the verge of giving up and concentrating on Mid-Atlantic's core business of producing middle and high school competitions.

But Sweet Briar dean and professor of music Jonathan Green is a judge at those competitions and in a chance conversation, he suggested Leonard talk with Edwards. They were able work out an affordable cost structure and Edwards, backed by the College, agreed to build additional practice fields accommodate the camps.

More information about Mid-Atlantic Camps is available at http://midatlanticcamps.com:8080/. For more information about the camps at Sweet Briar, please contact Edwards at sedwards@sbc.edu or (434) 381-6160.

A camp schedule follows:

Band Front Camp

Monday, July 13 to Friday, July 17

The final exhibition will be held at 9 a.m. July 17 in Williams Gymnasium.

Will be attended by about 200 mostly high school students from four states who are members of color guard (flags, rifles and winter guard), drum major and drum line sections.

Middle School Concert Band Camp

Sunday, July 19 to Thursday, July 23

Final exhibitions will be held at 1 p.m. Thursday, July 23 in Murchison Lane Auditorium.

Approximately 250 students will attend.

Marching Band Camps

Tuesday, July 28 to Saturday, Aug. 1

Sunday, Aug. 2 to Thursday, Aug. 6

Friday, Aug. 7 to Tuesday, Aug. 11

Final exhibitions will be performed at 9 a.m. Aug. 1, Aug. 6 and Aug. 11 on the lower athletic field behind Babcock Fine Arts Center.

Two to four high school bands will attend each session, with as many as 400 musicians. Bands from Chapel Hill and Carrboro, N.C., are signed up, along with several Roanoke Valley and Southwest Virginia high school bands.