As the winter months begin to heat up, so does the Winterguard who have been competing and preparing for championships. The Winterguard currently holds onto their fifth place spot, dropping from their previous third place title, but that will not stop them from going to championships.

“Championships are the twenty-fourth of March. You don’t really make it to championships. You just have to perform within the first three weeks of the season starting to make it. Ranking determines how well you perform and if your division gets split into two different rounds at championships, then that determines which round you go into,” senior Elizabeth Hans said.

                Although the guard has had luck in the past, this season, Winterguard competitions seem to have been different from previous years.

                “Obviously, we had troubles because we did not have Winterguard last year and most of our members are new. Also, not all of our competitions have been conventional. We’ve had a lot of different setups. Usually, there are no finals until championships, but at our third competition at Francis Howell, we had finals,” junior Jacee Wood said.

                On March 10, the girls competed at Nixa, making it their last competition before championships at Willard.

                “We got fourth out of ten at Nixa and I thought we did really well. So at championships, they start with the best performing last so we should probably be third to last to perform,” sophomore Leah Barks said.

                The competition at Nixa has allowed the girls to get a feel of what is to be expected at their final competition of the season.

                “The team before us beat us by a tenth of a point, and the team that got second beat us by four tenths of a point, so it was all very close. Championships will be a really tough competition. Everyone’s really going to be fighting for it,” Hans said.

                The guard girls have had similar expectations for championships.

                “I don’t want to get my hopes up because we took a year off but I expect to be at the top. Hopefully we’ll win, but who knows. There’s a lot of good competition out there, but from what we saw at Francis Howell North competition, Eureka and Mascoutah were pretty good so they’ll probably be up there. I think it’ll be a pretty good competition and we have a good chance,” junior Calli Luna said.