Color guard gains five freshmen

by Ace R.

This school year, the color guard has five freshmen on the team. Over the summer, all but one chose to attend tryouts and bandcamp where they became the newest members of the color guard.

This color guard news is important, as the AHS flag spinners have yet to see the limelight; it seems like most press centers around football, basketball, cheerleading, and sometimes even marching band, but students and stakeholders never hear about the color guard. It’s time to shine a light on an overlooked extra curricular.

Currently, the color guard contains five freshmen and four veterans. With marching band season having already begun all nine girls only have a few months to perfect a nine-minute show. For our four veterans, this may not seem so difficult, but it may be a different story for our freshmen.

Our Color Guard freshmen, Maria H., Daisha W., Lauren V., Ace R., and Maddie L. have little to no experience. They are pushing their bodies and minds with three hour practices three times a week to learn everything from how to march to tossing a six foot flag multiple feet in the air while marching!

Due to the rigorous practice schedule, color guard is not an activity to join if a person is already involved in other things. Daisha W., who prefers to go by Dai, told me, “It’s been affecting my schedule,” after informing me she also played softball and will have to quit due to three practices a week and Friday night football games.

Color Guard captain Jayden T. has been spinning flag for five seasons and said working with newbies is frustrating when they don’t listen or pay attention, though also commented that it was “Very funny when they do something wrong” but that it was okay because “everyone laughs and we move on”

Maria H., a freshman on the guard, says, “People are going to get aggravated” but also “at the end of day I still do it because I know I have to.” Maria also says, “It makes me want to go to school” and that she “feels apart from something.” She also said she wants to join the winter guard and could not be more excited about it.

It seems the reaction to the newbies on the Color Guard is overall very positive. Mr.Spitler, Drum Major Kelby K. and Coach Paz have been nothing but positive and supportive of our new members. Marching band veterans and color guard veterans have done a great job helping our colorguard freshmen work on tossing, marching, and putting together the perfect show.

The main color guard coach, Paz, has been performing for twenty three seasons and has been instructing color guard for ten seasons. She has worked with guards as big as twenty kids to our last year color guard with a mere eight.

When asked about the most frustrating part of working with newbies Paz replied, “The hardest part for me is keeping a high enough difficulty level of work without overwhelming and alienating the brand new students.” Overall, Paz loves seeing new faces on color guard as it gives her an opportunity to learn how to better her teaching skills and work with people while also teaching her students a sense of responsibility, teamwork, and hard work. “Hard work needs talent when talent doesn’t work hard” is something Paz will be saying many times this season and into the winter season. When asked if she had anything else she wanted to inform the public surrounding the topic of color guard or winter guard she mentioned that interested parties do not need any previous experience to do winter guard or color guard. No special skills are needed, and you do not need to be a girl to participate in color or winter guard. Paz also mentioned that if those interested are athletes who need to keep their training in the off season, such as playing a fall sport, joining winter guard could be good for them, as it takes strength and stamina to do this sport. Similar to soccer, cheerleading, and dance, color guard is dangerous in some ways, especially since it is one of those sports where if an injury occurs there is no timeout. The show must go on.

Color guard is more than just flag spinning. There’s dancing and also the use of fake rifles and taped sabres. The color guard is the visual part of the marching band show. The work interprets the music. While originally color guard was only performed alongside a band it has developed into its own sport for the off season of winter guard which is done in the winter and sometimes spring. Since the guard will be unaccompanied by the band they perform indoors to a prerecorded piece of music rather than to the band.

As mentioned earlier, color guard and winter guard can be very dangerous sports. Spinning a six foot flag with another person with another flag six feet away makes it difficult not to hit anyone. Many people suffer concussions and other major injuries just for catching something the wrong way, hence why participants go under training from tryouts.

While the color guard season has already begun, Coach Paz has disclosed the dates and times for winter guard tryouts. Tryouts are a week long. They will be held from Monday November 6 through Friday November 10. Tryouts will run from 4:00-6:30 and applicants have to come to every single day of tryouts to learn the basics of flag, the basics of dance, the routine that will be used to audition, a day of full practice, and finally the actual audition day..

For those who found this article interesting, look into joining the winter guard.