Winter Guard (414)

If you have read my blog before you will see a lot of show choir, color guard and marching band, but there is also one activity that gets a lot less recognition; winter guard. Winter guard is just like color guard in the way that you dance some and spin flags and it’s a performance for people to watch. The differences are that there is no band any more, just a recorded track to play, they also perform on a big “floor” set in the middle of a gym. The winter guard performs just as the dance team would, like in a gym or arena to a short song, about a minute to two minutes long. At my school participants in winter guard have the choice of performing a solo at state or MA solo drill competition.  In their solo participants can wear and perform whatever they want as long as it abides by the set rules.

            I believe that winter guard doesn’t get as much recognition as it should. The people on the teams practice a lot, but if you ask any random student if they like it they might react with “What’s winter guard, bro?” Winter guard performs at some basketball games at half time. Basketball is not as big of a spectator sport as football games though so not as many people see it.

            Their performance starts with them and their helpers (coaches and parents) bringing out the mat and equipment. After everything is placed the announcer presents them and their performance starts. Judges give points for performance, technique, and overall presentation. They also take away points for moves not being together, bad technique, if you break the rules, etc. Some rules are pretty normal like, no curse words in the song, but some are odd like, no roller blades, no pole dancing and so on. Once the performance is over the performers pull their mat off the performance area and the next group would come up or the basketball game would restart.

            When we performed winter guard for the student body two years ago, you could say it wasn’t our best performance, we missed our beginning cue, no one was performing, and we were all nervous for our peers to be watching us.  Yet we still got a standing ovation. From this reaction I think that if people could see more of winter guard that they would enjoy it and then the performers would get more recognition for their hard work.