Have you ever wondered what goes on in the VEC gym 6pm-9pm every Tuesday and Thursday, and 12-6 Saturdays during the winter? Many people don’t know, but our school has a highly successful competitive Varsity Winterguard team. During the months of November through April, the Victor Varsity Winterguard team is hard at work creating their show for the upcoming season.
Taking a deep dive into its history, Winterguard is the sport of indoor Colorguard derived from military ceremonies. In this day and age, the performers incorporate dance as well as spin and throw a variety of equipment including flags, mock wooden rifles, and metal sabres.
For this upcoming 2024 season, the Victor Varsity Winterguard team will be performing their exciting and energetic show entitled “Vibrant City”. The team this year consists of 17 incredibly talented girls ranging from ages 17 to as young as 12, and I am lucky enough to be 1 of the 17 girls on the team.
Unfortunately, due to its unfamiliarity and lack of importance, the Victor Winterguard program is unrecognized and undersupported by the school. This year is the first year that the Victor Winterguard program is receiving money from the school, ever. Prior to this year, all members and our coaches have had to pay for everything out of pocket.
Right now, Varsity Winterguard is listed under “clubs” on the Victor Central School website. This has made it extremely hard to become known because our program doesn’t get the same recognition as other sports. Winterguard is an audition/try out based sport, making it competitive.
Olivia Peone, Junior, has been a part of the Victor Winterguard program since she was in fifth grade. Peone reflected on highlights and challenges throughout the years, saying, “Winterguard has been a source of pride for me when we are at competitions, but just the opposite in school… I’ve been mocked and laughed at and told that what I go to practice for at the same time as every other sport isn’t a sport at all”.
“We lose practice spaces to modified sports and Little League sports even though we’re a varsity level program… sometimes we are left out of the scheduling for the space we have reserved every week Tuesdays and Thursdays from 6 to 9 entirely”. Because of this, we are left to practice a majority of our practices in a cafeteria, or when the cafeteria is occupied by Girl Scouts under the age of 10, we have to practice in a hallway.
For as long as I have competed with the varsity team, the Winterguard team has been unable to obtain practice spaces on campus. Our normal practice space is the gymnasium in the Early Childhood School. Because of the intensity of our choreography, we can only successfully practice in a gymnasium with high ceilings.
What many people don’t know is how successful our school’s Varsity Winterguard team is. The program has been around for 25 years and counting, created in 1998 here at Victor. In 2005, the team went inactive due to lack of membership, but was able to come back the next year. In 2017, the Winterguard team competed at the WGI World Championship competition and received a bronze medal at the world level.
In 2020, just prior to everything being shut down due to Covid, the Varsity Winterguard team was in a fantastic place. They were undefeated in local competitions they competed in and ranked 7th in the world in their division. This is something that I’m sure people didn’t know, unless you were a part of that team.
“We go to the North-eastern circuit championships every year and as long as I’ve been a part of this under-advocated program, we have placed 1st almost every time. Yet there’s no championship flag, no announcement, and not even a sufficient place to put our trophy but a storage closet in the basement”.
Last year, we traveled to Dayton, Ohio for the WGI World Championship competition competing against 140 teams from around the world, which wasn’t recognized by the school in any way. Every sports team deserves their efforts and accomplishments to be celebrated.
Just recently, the Varsity Winterguard team started their competitive season. So far we have placed first at both of the competitions we have attended, but not just first, we are multiple points higher than our closets competitor. We haven’t been recognized by the school in any way for the success we have had in the past two weeks.
As much as I love the sport of Winterguard, I think I speak for my entire team when I say it would be a lot easier to love the sport and wear our team tracksuits with pride if we were supported by the school and certainly our peers, rather than just family and close friends.
When your sport is unknown, not talked about, and never seen, people are quick to make assumptions when they know nothing about what you do behind closed doors at practices. Our peers fail to see and understand how physically demanding and challenging it truly is, and how much training goes into being able to do what we do.
Despite everything, joining the Victor Colorguard program was the best decision I have ever made. Colorguard as a whole has benefited me in more ways than I can describe. From my physical health to my mental health, I have never been better. The life long friendships and memories this team and sport have given me make it all worth it.
