El Rancho High School’s Color Guard made second-place in their recent competition! The whole ordeal took place at Valencia High School (Santa Clarita), where the school’s team gave all their effort. There were 8 schools in this commotion, each given 1-2 minutes to set up (to pick up everything and leave as well), while their performance can be as long as needed. The judging was based on overall performance, equipment, movement, design, general effect, and musicality.
“I felt amazing, I performed, not my full heart out but I performed pretty good. Experience on being down for awards was very scary but hearing our name being 2nd place instead of like 6th was very shocking and amazing,” captain Jalyssa Ybarra says. “Love the team we have for this show and I can feel like we will be better from here on out. Also, performing I get nervous.. I guess but I still try to block that and just enjoy what I’m doing because you only live once. In the end we went home with something better than just a piece of paper, we actually got a trophy and it was really amazing and can’t wait for next week.”
Many of the participants felt similarly to Ybarra, feeling nervous or scared but the team does not fail to exceed expectations.
“Honestly, it felt so amazing to perform. I was really nervous, though, cause I saw the other guards practicing,” says Serenity Ortiz. “I kind of felt like we weren’t gonna place in the top 5 for it being my senior year. I was honestly so excited to hear about El Rancho High School’s second place and I was so glad I got to perform with one of my best friends.”
“In my experience, it was the first time that I felt proud of getting second place. I came into color guard with a couple years of cheerleading, which is a severely competitive sport where it is widely believed in cheerleading that “if you’re not first, you’re last.” It was a culture shock to me that we celebrated third or fourth place last year because I entered color guard with that mindset,” says Izzy Orona. “As I enter my second year going through the highs and lows of this activity, I can say that, for once, I felt proud to get off that mat. Even with the sweat beads on my face, with my heavy breathing and mistakes I made in my performance. Even though I was concerned that I didn’t perform to my full potential afterwards, I still celebrated with my team feeling like I contributed to something great.”
“I would be lying if I said that I had held confidence during the team’s performance. I had confidence as the team was getting dressed into their costumes. I had confidence as we drove to the location of the competition. I had confidence as we were practicing our routine before our call time. But the moment my feet touched the competition floor my confidence had dropped. I had thought about all the possible mistakes I could have made as soon as my eyes locked on the judges above. I was afraid that my team was going to strike in perfection as I endlessly failed and brought down my team’s ranking. But as the music played and I lifted my head I looked around and remembered that I was not alone on this floor. I was not the only one struck in fear. For many of us it was our first time performing and we were all afraid of failure. Sure our first performance was not perfect, but with the mistakes we made we will learn from them and improve moving on,” says Hailey Hic.
“I felt sorta nervous but was just concentrating on doing my tosses the run before we went on and I was like “okay I got these boots down,” then we walked on and in my head all I was saying “you’re the body tea, Gluteus Maximus Gigantic.” Then we started and I was like [I} ate that first toss and then it started going downhill. My 2nd toss hit my head so hard I heard it echo within my skull but it somehow didn’t probably from adrenaline and in my mind I could only do 2 things– let my coach rip me a new one and just cry, or continue while dizzy. I didn’t feel like getting a new one because I was tired and cold as hell,” Genevieve Fernandez says. “So whatever, I’m doing the rest of the work but the rooms are kinda shaking, but I was like whatever it’s fine. I tried to smile throughout the whole performance but the beat hadn’t dropped yet so I was like bro what do I do? I look goofy. As soon as it’s done I somehow couldn’t breathe and felt like I was on it. I felt like I definitely could’ve done better but we also got 2nd place. So, in my mind if we could pull off 2nd place with stuff still being left out and my mistakes, once we get those cleaned up we’re gonna come home with [so many] trophies. Then on the bus ride back to the school, I saw the schools we’re up against because our coach wanted to compete at bougie schools, I saw we [might] be cooked but I hope we serve this year.”
Evidently, El Rancho’s color guard team had a lot to be nervous about, but a lot more to be proud of as well. This second-place performance is a great achievement for them and a lasting impact for the team and others involved. Make sure to keep supporting El Rancho’s Visual and Performing Arts students so they can have more lasting moments like these!
