With the football season now in full swing, Color Guard shines at every half-time. Their ensemble consists of elaborate choreography with flags and eye-catching visuals. 

David Arvin, Director of the Rock Hill Color Guard, discussed the hardest part of teaching new kids. “Every year, essentially, you’re kind of starting from square one and trying to get kids who’ve never done this before to go along with kids who’ve been doing it for four or five years to be able to mesh and and meet the same artistic goal, and showcasing the same experience level without showing the gaps in their learning and where their experiences actually at.”

Color Guard itself is a combination of dance and ROTC, but it’s more like an artistic performing arts activity; aside from dancing and spinning flags, they also learn to spin rifles and sabers, similar to the JROTC. In the spring semester, Color Guard becomes Winterguard, which focuses on doing dance performances indoors. 

“It’s really fun, but it obviously takes a lot of responsibility and a lot of mental capacity to be able to do these things,”Color Guard freshman Katelyn Harrison said. “But it really pays off in the end.”

Arvin believes that his student’s favorite part about Color Guard is the friendships they make. Performing and spending lots of time together outside of school encourages strong bonds between students. 

“We say it’s kind of like you create your own little family here at the school,” Arvin said. “ I think it’s those experiences of going to football games and performing, getting to go to competitions and meeting other schools around Texas of people that do the exact same thing that they’re doing. I think it’s the experiences that they enjoy the most.”

The Guard works on perfecting new techniques while also learning their routines for performances.

“In general, we all sometimes go in different groups. But my group, we mostly work on flags because we learn new flags almost every day”, Paige said. “And so we try to piece that choreography together, especially with the band too.”

While partaking in both half-time performances and appearances at pep rallies, CG also participates in competitions. Their most recent competition was last Saturday; though they didn’t make finals, CG’s performance stunned.

Directing Color Guard seems to be a challenge sometimes, but Arvin enjoys the challenge. “My favorite thing about directing color guard is honestly just getting to teach the kids to open up some new experiences and see the fun learning moments that they get to participate in over the year and see something new for what they are and what they’re trying to experience.”

With more performances still to come, Color Guard is sure to leave a mark.  “Performance just ties everything together.”