Winter guard will end its season with the North Texas Colorguard Association (NTCA) Championships on April 3 at Coppell High School.

“Over the past few weeks we’ve been trying to improve our show for championships,” senior co-captain Savannah McClure said. “We’ve been tuning out the fine details. We’ve won a couple of our competitions, which is awesome, obviously. We just really want to do great this weekend [and] put out our last show.”

The team is ending the season with multiple wins, one being first place at the NTCA competition March 4-5. As a senior, McClure said she feels like this season has been a good wrap up for her high school guard experience. 

“It’s been overall a great season for my last one,” McClure said. “I just want to leave on a good note because [this is] going to be one of my last winter guard performances ever. I think when I leave, hopefully, I’ve made a positive impact on the guard as the captain and just an upperclassmen in general.”

Since the guard performed in the Tournament of Roses Parade in January, the team started the season late and was behind other teams at its first competition. 

“It was a little rough at the beginning,” junior Mycca Clay said. “Coming back from California, a lot of people had [COVID-19,] so we had a really slow start. Now that we’re kind of in the swing of things, it’s gone a lot better.”

The show is titled “Wriggle” and has a unique and colorful theme compared to other lyrical or upbeat winter guard shows. 

“We get to stick our tongue out and make all these faces at the audience,” McClure said. “It’s pretty fun getting to step out of that box and bring something new to the color guard world. It challenged us as a team to step out of our comfort zone, because normally you have to look gloomy and curious for winter guard, and we’ve had to be upbeat during the whole show when [we’re] tired.”

Clay said being close with her team has helped the performances and made the funny moments in the show seem even more enjoyable.

“Since our show is more fun and interactive, it helps with performing,” Clay said. “It definitely gives the judges more props to us since we can interact with each other during the show and smile during our show to each other. It helps us get through the show for sure.”

McClure said the last few weeks the team has been fine-tuning parts of their show in preparation for the competition, as well as reminding each other of their motto, “All In All The Time.”

“We feel pretty prepared,” McClure said. “All of the performances we’ve been doing have been really good. We’ve been placing really well, so that also helps give us a boost to do better than what we put out [the] last week. [It] was great, but we want to be excellent. That’s what we’re reaching for.”