Valencia High School hosted the winter classification showcase for color guard on Saturday. The event is for high schools all over Southern California to have the opportunity to classify their color guards and make their competitive debut, marking the first main event of the season.
Classification rounds in color guard determine what placements each team will have based on skill level.
Scholastic AAA, AA, and A are classes where the units display intermediate level skills. Scholastic open is for units that display intermediate/advanced skills.
“This is the first event of the season, both competitively and to classify a lot of the color guards that are not sure what class to put their color guards in,” said Lorraine Kohagen, advisor of Valencia’s color guard teams.
Valencia’s color guard, Pride of the Vikings, made sure they were ready with a well-executed routine.
“The staff, we usually start the season before in terms of developing what kind of program we want to put together … somebody that does our staging, we talk colors, we talk costumes, we talk flags and then we do a camp over winter break to kind of get things rolling,” Kohagen said.
Since Valencia has hosted the Winter Guard Association of Southern California for the past three years, it makes things more comfortable for the team.
“This week is kind of the preview week … it’s a good time to get in that first performance and just kind of test out different things, choreography, see how audiences react. And it’s also good for us since it’s on our home turf. So, we kind of know the ins and outs,” said Kennedy Boyd, one of the captains of Valencia’s color guard.
The results for the participating high schools in the Santa Clarita Valley were as follows:
High School Classification Round
• Saugus JV 1st.
• Valencia JV 3rd.
• Canyon High School 5th.
Scholastic AAA:
• Castaic High School 2nd.
• Golden Valley High School 3rd.
Scholastic AA:
• Valencia High School 1st.
Scholastic A:
• West Ranch High School 1st.
Scholastic Open:
• Saugus High School 1st.
