On April 6, the Arapahoe Combined Schools Wintergaurd took the stage at the DU Ritchie Center for their State finals. They took 15th place with a score of 71.280 points. “We improved over the season. We broke 70 which is the first time we have done that at Arapahoe since the [2020] show,” says one of the captains Ben W ’25.
Ben was one of the four Heritage students on the ten person team. All LPS students are invited to participate on this team. “Since it’s a separate thing from marching band, we struggle to get enough membership to have a full team to compete for the season. So, for a while now it’s been tradition of LPS that we all combine into one winterguard,” explains Ben. He adds, “All LPS students are invited, however Littleton’s staff does not want their students to join Arapahoe Winter Guard.” Due to this, only one LHS student was on the team.
Winterguard is a form of color guard set indoors. Ella H ’26 states, “It’s a little more dance based than marching based.” In marching band there are many moving parts and the band and colorguard work together on a football field. Wintegaurd is a little more exposed. Ben states, “It’s very focused on you. So, you can often do a lot more but…it’s harder to perform well.”
“Money Kills” was the title of the 2024 season’s show. “The show was supposed to be a very cheesy, silly cops and robbers type show,” describes Ben. “The idea behind it was… a bunch of robbers blowing up banks stealing a bunch of money. And then the police come and antics and hijinks ensue.” While it was a fun concept many of the performers were disappointed in the lack of sophistication. “It’s very difficult when you don’t feel passionate about what you’re spending ten hours a week on. It’s very hard to stay motivated and do well…I think that was something that limited us. No one particularly loved our show.” Ella recalls. However, it improved a lot throughout the season through hard work. “I hope for next year that we have a show that we can all enjoy and care about,” says Ella.
This year the team got a new coach, the third in three years. “This year we had a pretty chill environment but our new coach had very different creative decisions than a lot of our previous coaching so that was weird to adjust to,” says Ben. “With a new coach we had to transition a lot of what we had done in the past to what she wanted. It was one of my responsibilities to help be a part of that transition.” Ella corrabates adding,” Sometimes expectations from the performers and our coach were different but generally the vibe was good.” The team worked through this by focusing on communication. “We had a few discussions about things that everyone could do better,” says Ella.
The team’s performance at State Finals in April ended their season. They had to attend one of the season’s first three meets and perform at regionals to qualify. Though they scored well, Ben tries “not to place too much importance on scores in this sport. Just because it’s such a subjective thing that putting an objective score on a subjective sport doesn’t really work.”
If you are interested in joining the fall season of Heritage’s colorguard stop by the band room on May 21 for the next rehearsal or email Mr. Evan Allenson at eallenson@lps.k12.co.us.