Staying 6 feet apart during pandemic was the norm for these winning color guard teams

If there’s one type of team that knows how to stay 6 feet apart, it’s the color guard. The safe distance is coincidentally the length of the flags they toss and twirl. The three teams representing the high schools of Lee’s Summit recently triumphed in various ways as they ended a very different kind of season.

Each winter guard — the name given to color guard teams when they’re not competing as part of marching band season — took part in a season of virtual competitions, since in-person events are still off the table.

Lee’s Summit North’s Crimson Colors Winter Guard took part in the Mid-Continent Color Guard Association Championships’ Scholastic Regional “A” competition and brought home a gold medal after tying with Branson High School.

“It’s been hard. We have stuck very strictly to 6 feet apart,” said Paige Brown, head coach for Lee’s Summit North.

“We never have our masks off, and the girls and guy are doing extremely complex moves with these masks on. They are troopers. They never complained about it, and we never had any problem with (COVID-19) spreading. It never came into our guard.”

All the teams got a late start on their seasons due to pandemic restrictions.

“We didn’t want to order our beautiful costumes and not be able perform. It was a big waiting game,” Brown said.

Once they did get started, things were very different, with temperature checks and major reductions in social activities.

For members of the color guards, keeping distant at practice was like “being around their friends but not really being able to be around their friends,” Brown said.

Lee’s Summit West’s Titan Pride Winter Guard was at the same virtual competition as North but competed in a different round, where they received a silver medal. Their “Iridescent Illusions” show put some pep into everyone’s step.

“It was very fun, upbeat and hip-hoppy,” said Abby Vanderman, color guard director at Lee’s Summit West. “It was something the kids could kind of relate to. There were a couple of times where our dancers mimicked fun TikTok dances.”

Her team also found the circumstances challenging, but the kids took it in stride, Vanderman said.

“They worked very hard and helped each other out, but there wasn’t much time outside of practice for them to get together with online schooling.”

The season actually started for them with virtual auditions and Zoom meetings before they were able to have masked in-person practices.

Virtual competitions work like this: The team gets together at its normal practice time and runs through the dance while being recorded. Unlike a regular in-person competition, this allows teams to discard a less-than-perfect take and record it again. After the recording is done, the coaches send it to the judges, who score it on the competition day.

Both Vanderman and her team are taking the lessons of this year in stride.

“We’re an ever-growing team. We’re thrilled with our performance this year and how everything panned out. We’re ready to keep moving forward,” she said.

At Lee’s Summit High School, the Golden Guard took a different competition route, choosing to participate in Winter Guard International Scholastic “A” competition instead of at Mid-Continent Color Guard Association.

The flexibility of virtual competitions allowed them to compete farther from home than they might otherwise have done. This competition was structured in a similar way to the others, with a pre-recorded performance submitted digitally to the judges.

Placing in the top 70 out of 179 color guards from around the country, the team made it to the semi-finals — a big achievement, said head coach Laura Finch.

“It’s just neat to see the sport transcends all over. A lot of people, if you say guard, they think ROTC. It’s like a little community within itself,” Finch said.

“I told the parents, ‘This is an opportunity for us to get noticed. All over, they’ll know who the Lee’s Summit High School Golden Guard is, instead of staying in our own little circuit with the same teams we always compete against.’”

Even with all the precautions, the team did get quarantined once when a member contracted COVID.

“I feel like we were lucky it only happened to us once,” Finch said.

Doing the demanding exercises in masks was “exhausting” for the girls, but keeping them safe was worth it, Finch said.

“At first, we had quite a few saying, ‘I don’t understand why we have to wear this.’ Because we’re a team, we don’t want someone to feel like they can’t participate because we’re not taking things seriously. It’s something little wearing a mask for our four-minute minute performance,” Finch said.

“Even though it’s really hard, it allows all of us a sense of safety.”