By Kylee Robles
After not competing for 25 years, color guard has decided to spin back in. But it wasn’t as easy as you may think. There were many ups and downs, including not having a coach for some of the season.
It was freshman Jocelyn Moody’s first year doing color guard.
“We didn’t really know what we were doing or what we were supposed to do (at the beginning of the year),” Moody said.
Currently there is a coach for color guard, Dottie Shuler, who was hired in late August. Emily Garringer was the former coach, and Dottie was one of her students in high school. But Garringer chose a full-time job at Jay County.
“I think that it was hard not having a coach,” freshman Makayla Poole said. “It gave us a loss of hope, and it didn’t give us any confidence.”
Prior to having a coach seniors Topanga White and Lauren Buckley were the ones who most took charge of the team.
Even if the color guard didn’t win they still had a good attitude, and they still looked for ways to grow.
Although the whole team had positive encouragement, it was still a struggle getting everyone to be focused and determined.
Sophomore Savannah Condie believed so, too. “Working together was very hard,” Condie said. “Not everyone liked agreeing.”
For your sport or activity it might be easy to get along with everyone, but for color guard, they had their flips and turns.
White wanted to be firm teaching the underclassmen while there was no coach, but she also wanted to keep the enjoyment and still have fun.
“I was more strict and serious, but I still wanted to have fun and I just wanted to get my point across,” White said.
Despite White doing color guard for one year she still wanted others to hear her voice.
Even without a coach, Buckley still owned her leadership position.
“Every day that we didn’t have a coach for class, I would just go over the basics and we would work on cleaning up our warm ups and things like that until we got some choreography to do,” Buckley said.
Since Buckley is more experienced she wanted to play her role in leadership and get the girls to be clear and together.
While it might have been hard getting everyone on point and clean, the color guard team has finished out their season with a silver rating at prelims. They hope to flip back soon into some basketball games.
