By Emily McElyea
Flags flying through the air, people shouting counts throughout the gymnasium, rifles and sabers occasionally hitting the ground. That’s what senior Savannah Condie has heard at winter guard practice for the past four years.
Condie has been a part of the guard since her freshman year, while also being on the swim and dive team.
“Since practices are later, I go to school, then I go to dive practice, then color guard,” Condie said, “It just balances out equally with the timings, but it is very tiring with all the work.”
Since Condie joined, the team has more than doubled in size, going from a small group of six people to 15 members this season.
Condie makes it a big priority to not just help herself improve, but also reassuring those around her.
“I always pray for all of us before we go on and perform,” Condie said, “and I let them know that it’s all muscle memory now, and that they’ve got it.”
Lyla Stanley is one of the five new freshmen to join winter guard this season. She has been putting in a lot of effort to learn new skills and catch up with her more advanced teammates.
“It’s honestly just a gradual process of learning skills and stuff,” Stanley said, “I just try and make sure I stay on top of all of my school work so I don’t fall behind.”
Stanley has been putting in work to get ready for competition season, from running over counts and preparing herself mentally.
“There’s a few parts that I’m nervous about, but I think I’m probably going to be okay,” Stanley said.
Dottie Schuler has been coaching the Delta guard team for three years. She empowers some of the experienced team members to help the newcomers.
“Usually I know that some of my experienced people are capable of helping anybody out,” Schuler said, “so if they see somebody struggling, I say ‘Alright, you’re gonna help this person, because you’ve got it, and they don’t.’”
Winter guard has completed two out of their seven competitions, walking out of them with first and second place medals.
Their first competition was in Anderson, where they placed second out of nine teams in their division. In their second competition, in Westfield, they placed first out of nine teams in their division. They are scheduled to compete again on Saturday, Feb. 15 at Carroll High School.
Schuler has seen a lot of improvement since the beginning of this season from both her new members and her advanced ones, but it hasn’t been easy.
“Just this season we added five new people, and it’s definitely been more of catching those people up, and also pushing the people who are already experienced,” Schuler said. “The balance is definitely difficult.”
The Winter Guard team practices three times a week for three hours after school on top of a guard class during school hours.
During their practices, they perfect things in their routine and change things the judges at their competitions didn’t like.
Freshman Faith Jennings is in her second season of Color Guard. She first tried out near the end of her eighth grade year and made the team, and since then has been putting in the maximum amount of effort to improve herself and her teammates.
“They have improved so much,” Jennings said. “I love seeing the new members learn everything, and they are doing so well, because in the beginning they barely even knew what the flag was.”
Even though this is Jennings’ second season of Color Guard, this is her first season of Winter Guard.
Winter Guard and Color Guard are different in many ways. In Color Guard, both the band and guard work together to put together a show, but during the winter season, it’s just the guard team.
During marching season, since the guard team works outside, they have to learn how to perform against the wind. In Winter Guard, all of their practices and performances are inside, which takes away some of the challenge when learning a routine.
