The Blue and White interviewed our Winter Color Guard to learn about the ins and outs of what goes on in preparation for the competition season. Practices have just started starting with a fresh slate of new members in the JV and Varsity team. It requires lots of commitment to be in the Winter Guard; you must go to practice two or three times every week and practice for four or six hours to keep up with the dances and flag work. Both of the Winter Guard teams are aiming to get gold this year, as varsity got bronze last year. The competition is competitive–around 200 teams are competing in JV alone this year.
Let’s begin our conversation with Bradley Jackson, the Varsity coach for winter guard who mainly teaches flag choreography. He started guard at Apopka High School and ended up teaching at Apopka. He explains, “I started guard in 2016 as a junior at Apopka. Then I did it in 2017 and 2018 at UCF as part of their Pegasus program, and then I’ve been teaching since 2017 until today. The biggest reason why I wanted to continue to teach is I just really enjoy the activity, and I love being able to teach other people the reason why I fell in love with the activity in the first place.”
This year Winter Guard is working harder to achieve their goals. Bradley states, “One of the biggest things that have changed this year is we’re finally able to have more staff members than just Dwayne and I [that means we are] able to split up our rehearsals. [Now] we have JV in one area and our varsity team in another area and have enough staff members to be able to efficiently run both teams instead of just the two of us trying to run two teams at the same time.” Dwayne is the JV Captain who mostly teaches the choreography to the show dance, so as you can imagine it is challenging to split your time between two teams teaching two different shows while also providing the corrections needed to make each person better.
Last year the Winter Guard considered each other as family, and they are still aiming for that connection and teamwork this year. Each team made a list of qualities they would like to see in the team, and the majority of the words had to do with teamwork and not just winning. They mentioned words like determination, passion, and kindness. In Winter Guard you can’t lose points, you can only earn them, so it’s essential to be cohesive and do everything as a team to earn points. Therefore, the coaches take the learning environment and who you are as a person seriously. If you get one referral, you’re off the team.
Sage Wilison, one of our JV winter guard captains, explained the connection she feels with her peers. She says, “Color Guard is like a second home to me it not only connects us on the floor but also as a family. I chose to join my eighth-grade year because my old middle school did a cadet team, and then I just fell in love. Ever since I was a little girl, I always used to watch the flag spin at football games and just fell in love.” As a leader, she also has some aspirations for her team. “I consider myself as a leader because I am very well respected on the team and I can be just [strict]. A really good goal I have for our team is to do well this year with placing [exceptionally] high at competitions and not only having a family as a whole but also doing more team leadership,” said Sage.
I feel that this year’s Winter Guard team will bring home the gold. They understand why it’s important to maintain a positive atmosphere and not let one bad practice demotivate them into not doing better the next time. Schools from as far as Georgia and Alabama will be coming to Florida to compete and do a 4-minute performance. One un-pointed toe makes the difference between 1st place and 200th.
