Color guard’s fall season is slowly coming to an end as the UIL Area competition is Saturday in Little Elm. When the marching band season ends, the group begins transitioning to their winter season.

“Hopefully it will be good,” junior Olivia O’Brien said. “I’m really excited because we’re already working on getting fit, and working on fundamentals so we are able to be more expressive in the winter guard season. It will help us become better as a group, and we can do more things with our equipment.” 

Whenever the UIL marching band season sends, color guard departs from band as they prepare on their own for their winter season.

“We do a lot of stretching and conditioning,” O’Brien said. “We have a lot of dance practices, we learn how to stretch correctly, we just practice our basic tosses and other stuff that we could do that might feel different inside compared to performing outside.” 

Senior McKenna Hale believes the winter season has its perks.

“I enjoy winter guard more because we have two different teams so the skill levels are different and it is indoors,” Hale said. “During the fall season we have to practice in the heat which is not very fun sometimes. Also it is just focused on guard because UIL judges don’t focus on guard during fall season so it is nice to have judges primarily judge us as a guard so we can improve for next year.”

The winter season allows the team to expand their expertise according to senior Lauran Hazzard.

“I enjoy winterguard way more just because it’s inside, it’s more challenging, and we get to use fun music and do harder tricks,” she said. “From fall to winter season, the differences are that we’ll have a junior varsity and varsity guard, and our shows will only be four mins instead of nine.”