Winter guard season steps up despite lack of seniors

Winter guard has already begun its preseason preparations for its first show, which will take place on Jan. 30 at James Logan High School.

The team will forgo its normal attendance at their premiere show on Jan. 9 to allow its members in color guard to focus on the Rose Bowl Parade instead. (Though many students participate on both teams, not all of them do.)

To help the team design this year’s show, winter guard instructor Joseph Kidd has hired Todd Ryan, the visual caption head of world-class drum corps Blue Devils.

“[We are] working through some things so the show has an organic feel to it,” Kidd said. “The production will be ever-changing [and] growing as the season progresses.”

The team hopes to perform three times at the regional competition Winter Guard International (WGI) Western Championships at the University of Nevada on March 19-20 by making it through preliminaries, semifinals and finals.  

“This particular group is much stronger than years past,” Kidd said. “The students have developed maturely into this competitive environment and I think we are building success as we speak.”

According to junior co-captain Amelia Schwabe, the loss of color guard members who do not participate in winter guard includes four seniors and has changed the dynamics of the team. With the addition of five students who were not in the color guard, they now have 33 members compared to 37 during field season.

This year will serve as a gap year for the team to adjust to the new members before they attend the WGI National Championships at Dayton, Ohio, next year. In response, younger members have taken on larger roles.

“I’ve noticed a lot of juniors have been stepping up and acting like seniors,” Schwabe said. “We want to work a lot harder than last year and put in more effort. With that, we can compete at a higher level and build off of what we did this year for next year.”

Auditions for the team were held in November; 30 out of 37 students were chosen, and three more were given “shadow spots,” a position similar to understudies. Kidd said that students at the auditions were taught a flag phrase and movement piece, which were then evaluated based on four main criteria: confidence, body control, participation and execution, all of which are important in competitions as well.

According to Kidd, because the members are so equal in ability, “all spots are up for grabs at this point” although sabre, dance and flag line members have been designated. Spots will be made permanent by January, and Kidd said that attendance during rehearsals will be crucial to determining the final lineup.

While the lineup of the team has been consistently easy to manage, a conflict that has often plagued the winter guard each year is a lack of gym space — a problem that has influenced Kidd’s decision to maintain a single 30 member guard rather than create two separate JV and varsity groups.

However, this year, the winter guard has worked around the conflict by moving to Foothill Elementary School for weekly practices. Schwabe and junior co-captain Brittany Sample are responsible for showing up early at the high school gym before practices to help move the equipment to Foothill.

“We would much rather practice in our own gym than have to push all of our equipment to Foothill which has a smaller gym with a shorter roof which limits what we can do,” said Schwabe. “But I know that basketball and other sports have priority.”