Jefferson’s Color Guard Team is a part of the Thomas Jefferson Marching Colonials (TJMC), along with Jefferson’s marching band. Color Guard is a performing sport that uses flags, sabres, mock rifles, and other equipment, as well as dance and other interpretive movement. Every year, the team has a theme it follows, this year’s being ‘Not All Birds Were Meant to Fly.’

Guard at Jefferson has two seasons, one in the fall and one in the winter. The fall season starts off in July, with interest meetings taking place in May, while the winter season starts in November.  The 16 person team at TJ this year began on November 18th of 2021, with the season lasting for around 4 months.

“Everyone in guard is so supportive and friendly, which made our long practices even more fun. There were a lot of new freshmen that joined this season, pretty much half of our guard, and being new, we did similar flag work in the show. It was nice being able to learn and practice with them,” freshmen Chloe Toda says.

The team attended a number of competitions across the county, and placed among the top 10 in many of them. The team’s first competition, at an Atlantic Indoor Association event at Woodgrove High School, yielded a score of  59.97, but ended off the season with a score of 78.05 at their last competition at South County High School.

Apart from the fun and long practices, the color guard team teaches its members valuable lessons that can be applied anywhere. 

“One big thing that I learned from guard is that you can’t avoid messing up, and that you have to practice and persevere if you want to get better at something. There was a certain toss in our show that I struggled with for most of the season, but after taking time at home to practice it at home I finally figured it out. It felt really nice as the toss took me so long to get,” Toda said.

The color guard team, similar to many other sports and clubs at Jefferson, are a close-knit “family.” The team has had multiple spirit days, such as Cereal Day, Men in Black Day, Dress Like a Captain Day, and Flannel Friday. This brought the team together, and created some fun picture opportunities!

“A good memory is the day of our last competition. Most of the guard stuck around to support our winter drumline’s performance later that night, and together we went out for pizza, picked up desserts from Giant, got to see some amazing performances, then dropped off our leftover cookies with the TJ drumline. It was a really good time,”  Tian says.