Eagle Era

Inside the practices and routines of the second semester of color guard

By Keerthi Vasudevan

The air is humming with anticipation, and the lights begin to dim as shuffling footsteps can just barely be heard. Suddenly, notes echo throughout the gym, sharp and metallic. For the color guard team, winter doesn’t mean slowing down. It marks the beginning of a whole new season altogether; one filled with even more pressure than the last. Winter guard is composed only of color guard students, and no band members participate. 

This season is packed even more tightly than the last, with many more competitions and students paying much closer attention to their form and choreography. Currently, the AHS color guard team is preparing for championships, in which they have the chance to win a trophy for the school. 

Unlike the previous season, Winter Guard is always fully indoors. All the performances and choreography are done at various schools’ gyms. This means judges view the artistic aspect of the sport in a much higher regard. 

When asked about how this season compares to the last, Aashna Bhagia (9) said that “it’s not necessarily harder, just more different. Focusing on dance is new, but it’s honestly a challenge we enjoy,” When questioned about whether students dread this season after break, Aesha Desai (9) responded, “Choreography is hard, but we work together, and we have fun while we learn it.”   

Desai also talked about the difficulty of refreshing old skills for this season: “It’s still super fun, but it gets hard when we need to touch up on skills we don’t usually use” she said, adding that “practicing dance isn’t something we all love, but it gets better and we all end up enjoying it anyways.”

The winter guard theme this year is Gone Away. “This theme is pretty sad, like a lot of others we do. Gone Away is basically a theme that represents grieving for something special, knowing you’ll never get it again,” explained Desai. 

Color guard ended their homecoming game performance by marching out (Photo Credits: Aashna Bhagia (9)).

As the season progresses, the color guard team will prepare for championships, where their months of effort will all be tested in one final performance. “This is it. Like, we train all season to be able to show how hard we’ve worked at these competitions. We’re going to do just that this season,” said Bhagia.