Marissa (12 years, 7th grade) performed at her first field show for the Varsity team on August 29, 2008. Her school decided to create a colorguard team in the Spring and tryouts were held before the school year ended. Marissa is in the back, but appears as the flag girl on the right side of the screen/video for most of the recording. They aren't doing tosses yet as most of the girls are in the 6th grade and have never spun a flag before.
However - along with her first field show, the uniforms were pinned in place - they were too big for almost all the girls - and it had been raining a good storm just 40 minutes prior to the halftime show. We waited for a 60-minute delay for the game to start and left promptly after halftime as it was already 11:00pm and we were due to leave for Atlanta, GA early the next morning. I'm hoping the field shows get better but I'm thinking they need more teammates! They are being taught by a dance choreographer that knows little to nothing of colorguard (I wonder if I could get in on the teaching??) and the band teacher is actually one of the percussionists on the field!!! Marissa mentioned something about someone missing so maybe that's why the teacher was on the field.
Marissa is used to performing on a colorguard team as she had been on a Winterguard team for 3 years previously with the Concord Blue Devils ('A' Guard) from 2003-2006 (age 7-10 years) and performed with a much larger team against high school and college level teams and venues. Each year she attended the Regionals down in Southern California at either Riverside or San Bernadino college campuses. Winterguard is different in that she performed in the school gymnasiums to pre-recorded music. You didn't have to worry about the outdoor elements or the music being off, etc. Her picture below is of her first year in Winterguard at age 7.
Oh well, at least I know that Marissa will be going to public high school so that if we don't move and cannot get her on another independent team, she'll have a larger high school team to join up with. For the time being, this will keep her somewhat "warmed up".
