A couple weeks ago, Winter Guard finished out the season feeling victorious and the seniors confident with their last competition. Although this year has introduced some changes and trials, the Winter Guard team prevails and continues to grow, making new memories and saying goodbye to another successful year.

In order to perform well in Winter Guard, performers attest to putting in a lot of out-of-school hours of practice. While Color Guard had their own class and after-school rehearsals, it takes a continual practice and renewal of skills in the performers’ personal lives. However, the Color Guard tries to maximize practicing time in school. The class has been preparing for the performance for the majority of the school year.

“(We’ve) been preparing since Marching Band season (ended), so around the end of October,” said senior Tori Lampton. “Personally, I practice in-school, obviously, and usually on the weekends I’ll take my saber and my rifle home to practice, so like 10 hours a week.”

Going into the performance mindset at the beginning of the season, Color Guard had to be ready for some changes because this is their first year being officially taught by their new director, Mr. Thomas. This added pressure to leaders of Color Guard and made newer recruits uneasy.

“Adjusting to a new director was very hard, because I’m one of the only people that know the ways of the team and the normal tradition of doing things,” said senior Ryan Webb. “It’s kind of like, the younger people who didn’t know him were looking up to me as like a setting example of like ‘are we going to do this around him’, ‘how do we act around him’, ‘is he normal’, so I could’ve never reacted in any way that wasn’t kind towards him, because it wouldn’t have set a good example.”

But even with this new pressure, Color Guard quickly brought Mr. Thomas into their family and adjusted, leaving beautiful and exciting performances to rival last year’s.

“He’s really chill,” said Webb. “I’ve spun with him before, he’s been around before, so he wasn’t a complete stranger, and his way of teaching is completely different from our old coaches.”

“It’s different from Mrs. Potter,” added Lampton, “because they had two fully different ways of teaching. But I liked his vibe.”

On competition day, the Winter Guard rose and flew past expectations, landing them in 4th place overall. But while all of Winter Guard was celebrating, the last performance left some seniors with a slight bittersweet feeling.

“I was proud of it,” said Lampton. “I feel like that was our best run ever, so I was really proud of them, and I was happy because obviously it was our last one, and I’ll still come back to watch them next year.”

Webb felt similarly. “This (was) like the actual end, or the rap of my Color Guard career, but I was kinda happy as well to move on to different things in my life, because Color Guard does take a lot of time and commitment, so it’s kind of a mixed emotion. I’m gonna miss all the people that I’ve mentored and stuff like that. It’s been a long season (and) a long four years. It’s been fun, but I am going to miss them a lot.”

Now as the school year ends, Color Guard moves forward with tryouts, new officers, and new plans for the coming year. Although the championships happen annually, this year will be tough to beat, both in the aspect of 4th place and the memories made between the tight-knit family of Color Guard.