At the Mid Continent Colorguard Association Mascoutah Winter Guard competition on Saturday Jan. 29,  winter guard placed fourth with a score of 55.64 points. 

The guard attends the Mascoutah competition every year and all four Rockwood high schools attend. However, because of COVID-19, this was the first in person competition that the guard was able to attend in two years. 

This was the first competition of the winter guard season and the show had not been fully coordinated before the competition was attended. Winter guard coach Brandon Fink said that he thought the guard’s performance was very good in their first competition. 

“While the team is still in the production stage of our season, I thought even the newest choreography was handled with a great deal of focus and ambition to achieve,” Fink said. 

Senior Rebecca Doyle said that she was very happy with how the guard performed in their first competition.

“It wasn’t our best run, but I’m extremely proud of how we performed and many of our recoveries,” Doyle said. 

Senior Bea Eldridge said that she thought the guard did well, especially with the challenges they faced of having a still unfinished show and a lot of people who were new to in person competitions. 

“I think we all did really well; almost half of our team are new people and only five of us had been in an in-person winterguard competition beforehand,” Eldridge said, “We still have about a minute left of our show so I’m super happy with how we placed,” 

As it was their first competition, the group was not expecting perfection in their performance. However,  junior Ally Roberts said that both her and the guard performed admirably. 

 “I think almost everyone had a small mess up at some point in the performance but no one was expecting perfection. Personally I fumbled towards the end but I was very proud of how I did considering it was my first performance ever,” Roberts said. 

Being that the guard has not been able to attend an in-person competition in two years, Doyle said that something to improve upon overall was confidence. 

“This being our first show in two years, a major thing we could all work on is confidence. Many of us were nervous going into the competition and I think you could see it on our faces while performing,” Doyle said. 

Sophomore Alexis Liberman said that she thought the guard did well in their performance but that overall they could have been more in time and got into their character more. 

“I think we could have stayed in time with each other better and tried to perform the character more,” Lieberman said. 

The theme for the winter guard’s show this year was “We’re All Mad Here,” and tells a story of the mad hatter and how he’s been called crazy his whole life. Fink said that the goal of the show is to be weird and memorable to all those watching. Fink also said that he thought the performance achieved this goal as you could see from the audience that they were engaged in the show. 

“The theme of our show this year is very quirky and aims to leave a lasting impression with our audiences and judging community,” Fink said. 

Eldrige said that she loves this year’s show and that she was happy that this theme was the one for her senior season. 

“To me quirky shows are extremely fun to perform, and I’m glad this is my senior show. It’s certainly going to be something the judges remember,” Eldridge said. 

Since the first competition, Eldridge said that the guard has already changed several things in their show. She said that she is hopeful for the guard’s performance in their coming competitions. 

“Our goal in winter guard is to improve ourselves every time. Our coaches have already fixed some design things the judges mentioned, and by the next time we compete we will have a complete show, so our score should improve by quite a few points,” Eldridge said. 

Similar to Eldridge, Doyle said that she thinks that future competitions will be going much better as the guard will be more sure of themselves and have much cleaner performance. 

“We already changed so much of our show since [the last competition], but I know we’ll be going into our next competition more confident and even more cleaner,” Doyle said.