Months of planning led to the two-day Every 15 Minutes program, and preparing for such an event can be stressful and demanding.

The event required work from many, especially Assistant Principal Linda Roberts, ASB director Ryan Berg and coach John Gilgert, who pulled it all together.

Roberts was in charge of managing and making the event happen. She started organizing it at the beginning of the school year, securing a date with California Highway Patrol and courts.

From there she formed committees, assigning groups different tasks needed in order to prepare for the action. Berg and Gilgert were the legs of the organization. They gave support and assurance whenever Roberts or anybody on the committee needed it.

Keeping the event a secret was, to Roberts, “a key role in the experience.”

Carefully selecting the members of the committee to ensure confidentiality was critical. After that, she said, “We just had to trust people and the students we chose, though we can’t control some of the ‘leaks.’” If word were to have gotten to too many or too early it would have jeopardized the program.

The closer the date for the program got, the more stressful and demanding the preparation was. It was the week prior to the event that, to Roberts, was the most stressful.

Because of the schedule change and then involvement of more students the risk of mistakes and the news leaking was higher. The schedule change created a great challenge, she said, as “students were curious about what was going on.”

The second day of the program, when the pressure of everybody involved was through the roof, there was a technical difficulty with the video that was going to be shown.

Gilgert was able to save the day, with his ideas. He literally ran to get the equipment needed, a different projector and HDMI cord, and to ensure that the event would go just as planned.