Over the past few years, the winterguard has been on its own. This year, however, all three Elkhorn winterguards decided to combine into one big winterguard. This resulted in a total of 24 students on the guard, compared to the usual 8-10.
“At first, I was a bit skeptical of how it would work,” Captain senior Amanda Hoffman said. “But it has definitely been great getting to meet new people and share our skills and talents to make a better show.”
Naturally, when a big change occurs, adjustments happen as members learn how to work with new coaches, different styles of work, and get to know the members from the other schools.
“There’s definitely a division between all three schools,” Captain senior Julia McGill said. “We didn’t do it on purpose, it’s just like we’re comfortable with the people from our school. We all still talk to each other of course, but the division is there.”
With a larger guard, there is more planning and detail work that must be done in order to account for the different skill levels of the members and all of the moving parts.
“We’ve never really had the opportunity to have this many people before,” Elkhorn North instructor Kari Bart said, “The largest guard I’ve ever been a part of was 16 people. This is literally double that, so it’s a little intimidating to try to figure every single thing out because there are so many different moving parts with so many different people, so it’s a lot to plan out.”
The show theme, titled “Assassins”, features skills such as flag work, weapon work, and dance components, and has a spooky, almost intimidating vibe. The idea for the show was originally formatted last winter by winterguard instructors Kari Bart and Jayson Ross.
“We found the song first, and we had been talking about how that would be a cool show, but we didn’t actually think it was a realistic thing we could do because different songs fit better for different classes,” winterguard instructor Kari Bart said. “Then, we kind of made a plan to challenge the team and to get them to a place where we could perform in a higher class, and we wanted to give a good show for our seniors so they could experience a fun show like this.”
Show ideas for both winter guard and marching band are thought of and planned out far in advance, and a lot of work goes into creating the little details throughout the show.
“It’s a lot of planning, and realistically we can’t really start planning anything until we know numbers and who we have,” Bart said. “This year was a bit trickier, because we didn’t really know about the combined schools.”
The combined guard continues to work as they get ready to compete in multiple Heartland Winter Arts Association (HWAA) competitions over the coming weeks.
“These last three years have been really fun,” McGill said. “And I’m looking forward to learning the rest of our show and finishing out the season strong.”
View photos below from the HWAA competition on Feb. 10 hosted at ENHS.
