World Guard ends late competitive season on a strong note

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By Sydney Perez and Nikita Chen

**CHARMING THE AUDIENCE:** The West Broward High Color guard team shows all members in their unique costumes at Palm Beach Gardens on Apr. 24. They just placed second in the performance called “The Snake Charmer” against two other teams and still look flawless in their beautiful costumes.

After hours of training and dedication, the 18 students in the West Broward Color Guard had their first performance of the season. The performance took place at Palm Beach Gardens High school on Mar. 13, 2021. They displayed a strong performance in which they placed 1st in the advanced category.

Since early February, Color Guard has been training towards many performances and competitions. With weekly meetups for practices to perfect their routine, colorguard has persevered and competed in three events, at Palm Beach Gardens, John I. Leonard, and Flanagan High school. The performance was called Snake Charmer and the music played was a Hungarian violin with a very Asian twist.

“The show is called snake charmer. It’s about snakes that turn on their snake charmer. In the first half of the show, we listen to her and we obey and then after the second half we turn on her and don’t listen to her,” said sophomore Ava Firestone.

Color Guard displayed a charismatic and charming performance called Snake Charmer. The performance embodies the story of a princess who has the ability to control snakes, with the snakes turning on her midway though the performance. The movements were heavily inspired by this story, along with the catchy Asian and Hungarian music that stirs your blood. This routine was used for all of the competitions this season.

“We are showing the story of our betrayal to the snake charmer who is our main dancer, Alyssa Aguilara,” said senior Brelynn Jones. “The routine starts off strong and we introduce flags, sabres, and rifles with an intense ending as we turn on our snake charmer.”

COVID-19 has impacted the preparations, and the process of starting the season, delaying it to start in February. During practices and competitions, the members had to maintain COVID safety measures. The competitive atmosphere had also changed with less competitors and less of a crowd due to maintaining social distancing.

“There is a lot of paperwork involved just to enter the students and also for the field trip,” said band director Dean Calmer. “I had to make out COVID protocols of every minute of every rehearsal to what the students would do to be safe. We also have COVID release forms and COVID surveys done every time we meet.”

Twice a week the WB Colorguard meets after school for three hour practices to put their performances together. Occasionally the girls will put in extra time going to other schools or train on weekends.

“There were a lot of preparations that we had to use, we had to go to other schools and meet on weekends sometimes,” said freshman Jada Hawkins. “We would meet on Tuesdays and Thursdays and sometimes Fridays and Saturdays.”

The competition circuit consists of three categories, beginner, medium and advanced, with West Broward Colorguard being in the advanced category. They competed in their first competition of the season on Mar. 13, 2021 at the FFCC guard competition in Palm Beach Gardens High School. The category they competed in only consisted of their team which resulted in them placing in first.

“The palm beach gardens competition was our very first for the winter season,” Jones said. “We had many highlights, but I would say my favorite was the beginning dance feature because it set the foundation for our show and is something the audience did not expect.”

The foundation for our show and is something the audience did not expect.” On Saturday Apr. 10, West Broward colorguard performed at John I. Leonard Highschool. Many schools attended this event including different highschool and college teams. They performed well, competing against five other schools in their category and placing 3rd.

“We did well, We got 3rd place in the category that we performed in. There were 5 other schools,” Firestone said.

The WB Colorguard had their next performance on Apr. 17 at Flanagan Highschool.

The last competition of the season stood out from the rest, because it was the last one for the WB seniors of Colorguard. The team competed in a SFWGA guard competition on Apr. 24 at Palm Beach Gardens Highschol, scoring in second place.

“We got second overall with a really good run. We had to put the production together in about half the time we would usually have for a show so seeing it all come together at the end was awesome,” said Jones. It was really emotional for the seniors as it was the last time we completed in front of a big audience.”

Color Guard will continue to practice and work towards more upcoming events as this season comes to an end. Following the end of the season they will be working on a mosaic project with the West Broward Band. They will be working towards becoming the top five World Guards in the nation.

“We have done so good and we have two more [competitions] coming up, so I can’t wait for that,” said Freshman Victoria Daley. “We will look forward to being top of the top Five World Guards in the nation next year. But it starts this summer and Fall with Marching Band,” Calmer said