Enloe’s 2025 Winter Guard show: Live on Stage!
This year’s show is all about serving diva energy, confidence, and, hopefully, securing first place at the Atlantic Indoor Association competition. Taking inspiration from the ultimate diva, Elton John, and his flair for dramatic, over-the-top performances, and powerhouse vocals, Enloe Winter Guard will perform to a live recording of Elton John’s performance of “Bennie and the Jets.” Coming off an amazing season last year, Enloe’s winter guard won first at championships in the Regional A1 class for their performance of Glory of the Snow, allowing them to move up into a higher category: Scholastic!
So What Exactly is Winter Guard?
Winter Guard is a performance sport that combines artistic flag tossing, the use of nonfunctional rifles and sabers, and dance to create a visually striking performance to a pre-recorded song. This sport demands coordination, musicality, and endurance to make the performance as impactful as possible. Performers use costumes, backdrops, and props to enforce the piece’s theme, which can range from heartfelt to historical, and everything in between.
Winter Guard uses a variety of equipment to create an entertaining show. While each show uses a variety of props to match the theme of their shows, some items remain constant. Flags, for example, are large silk pieces of fabric attached to six-foot hollow metal poles. They are tossed, swirled, and twirled, creating an eye-catching display from the fluidity of movement of the silk. Rifles, on the other hand, are harder pieces of equipment, made from shaped wood covered with paint and tape. Color guard members who use rifles are at higher risk of being injured from the weight and height of the tosses, a piece of wood can inflict injuries much easier than a hollow pipe. Sabers, the hardest equipment of all, are curved, dull blades with a handle. They are tossed and swirled, an eye-catching piece of equipment that can also inflict injury. Despite it being the smallest piece of equipment, it is the hardest to control. Along with equipment, dance is a significant part of the show. With or without props and equipment, dance is another element of the visual performance that gives winter guard the title “Sport of the Arts.”
History of Winter Guard
The first National Guard competition took place on May 15, 1977. Since then, the sport has flourished, becoming a staple at football games and adding a visual element to marching bands. Before becoming the sport it is today, not much is known about the origins of color guard; presumably being an offshoot of military ceremonies stemming from presenting the colors and the usage of rifles. However, the creation of the sport is largely credited to Margret Twiggs.
Margaret “Peggy” Twiggs joined her high school band’s color guard after being rejected from drumline because she was female. One day, while bored and standing with a flag, she began spinning it. The instructor saw her spinning and asked for “trick lines” with the moving flags. After a national competition, these “trick lines” became the foundations forof today’s color guard. Peggy Twiggs was soon nicknamed Peggy Spins, the origin of the name “spinners” for referring to color guard performers.
While lesser known, Winter Guard rightfully has earned its name as a sport of the arts, using strength and coordination to create works of art. Good luck to Enloe’s Winter Guard team as they jet their way to the first place!
