Among the anticipation of the cheering football fans, half time rolls around each year bringing the RHS Bulldog Brigade and their shining stars: color guard. The guard girls work very hard throughout the year to prepare for the halftime show. They also have to prepare themselves for the winter season, when they will emerge not as the color guard, but as the winter guard. This year is going to be a different story due to funding issues.

“There’s nothing going on with winter guard because we don’t have the funds to pay for it. Usually the boosters help offset that cost and they are out of money this year. Our fund raisers aren’t going well. I don’t know if it’s just because of the economy or whatever it may be. We’re all hurting for money and trying to do fundraisers. The kids haven’t worked very hard for their fundraisers. So, if there’s no money, there can be no program,” band director John Slowensky said.

The lack of money and competing this year has let down the winter guard girls.

“Not competing this year does hurt. It’s my senior year, along with other girls, and we get told this so it hurts. I’ve been in guard since I was a freshman; this would have been my 8th performance, and now I don’t get to do that. I’ve waited all fall season for this and it’s not going to happen,” senior, and co-captain, Berlyn Davis said.

While some are majorly disappointed, others are looking at the brighter side of things.

“It’s really sad that we won’t be able to compete after our amazing season last year but it’s the right decision for now. It’s not like winter guard is completely gone we’ll just be able to do more things locally which is something we’ve always wanted to do and haven’t been able to due to competitions and such. We’ll still be the same tight-knit group things are just a bit different for now. Hopefully we’ll be back and competing in Scholastic A my senior year, though,” junior Elizabeth Hans said.

                Fundraising occurred as usual this year, but for some reason not nearly enough money was raised.

“Every year we have fundraisers and we are told to ‘sell, sell, sell’, or there might not be winter guard. Well that was the case this year. In my thinking if we were told how much [money] we needed to raise we could easily have raised it. We can only get so much from a fundraiser, telling us to ‘sell, sell, sell’ can only do so much. It really hurt us not to have our Route 66 marching festival,” Davis said.

                Even though there is not enough money for the girls to compete, they still have some events planned this year.

“We still have our Christmas dance, and our coach does plan to write a dance with a little equipment. So it’s not like we are doing nothing this winter season. To still be around the girls and hangout is awesome. We all get along great and we love spending time with each other,” Davis said.