On April 3, members of the Coppell Color Guard sat anxiously awaiting the results at the North Texas Colorguard Association state competition. The guard needed to be in the top three in order to receive a state ranking.

When Coppell was announced to have won bronze at the competition, the excitement that color guard members felt was apparent as they realized they made Coppell history as the highest placement at state championships in the existence of the program. 

Three days later, the guard left for Dayton, Ohio to compete in the Winter Guard International (WGI) where it placed 18th out of 24 schools competing. In the semifinals and the preliminaries, the guard completed two runs in which they felt they had performed the best as a group. 

“When I came to Coppell [in 2015], the program was in disarray,” Coppell Color Guard director Matthew Rummel said. “For them to place third at state and 18th in the world is a tremendous amount of growth. I am very proud of the performers and their commitment to that growth. It is wonderful to watch the talent level of the program grow each year.” 

The Coppell Color Guard competed at CHS in the NTCA State competition. Coppell placed third in the scholastic open class out of six schools with a score of 84.2. That score led the guard to receive the highest placement at this specific competition in Coppell’s history. 

“We were all really excited because we’ve never experienced this before,” CHS junior captain Cate Garrett said. “We’re kind of laying the land for people in guard in the future, and we were all very happy about it.”

The guard began preparing for “Toy Factory” in November and rehearsed for around 14 hours per week in addition to class time. 

In recent years, the size of the color guard has grown exponentially with more and more students joining the guard for the football and winter season. As the years progress, the guard has seen a growth in the number of people, leading to a corresponding increase of talent each year.

“It makes me happy being able to see people who have been there since my freshman, sophomore and junior year,” senior Alyssa Ponnada said. “Being able to see how the guard has grown because I remember in my freshman year, we had 23 people for the winter season and we weren’t that good. Now I’m seeing the guard get three times bigger, and everybody is so much more talented. It makes me really happy to see that.”

With one senior and three juniors as captains this year, the end of the winter season has made more space for other members of the color guard to step up and become the future leaders of the program for the upcoming seasons.

“I hope future groups continue to love performing as much as this year’s group did,” Rummel said. “We have the largest amount of students auditioning this coming year, so something must be going well, but I hope they continue to find the joy in entertaining people. As a byproduct of the hard work to entertain, I do hope they win everything, what coach wouldn’t want that? Winning is never the goal, but I always, always, always want that for them.”

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