Colorguard at SCSU begins to shine

Monica Zielinski – Special to the Southern News

NEW HAVEN, Conn. – After overcoming thermal shock from stepping out of air-conditioned class rooms to the intense heat on the Academic Quad, students milled about from table to table discovering what the Southern campus has to offer at the annual Club Fair.

Among the cheerleaders and fraternity brothers, the SCSU color guard displayed its school spirit with a decorative tri-fold poster complete with photos and information about the club sport.        Junior history education major, Barbara DiMaggio, handed out small blue flags with hand painted letters “SCSU” to spread awareness about a club which was reinstated in 2009, according to the captain, Laura Delosier.
“During the new club fairs that I went to as a freshman, there’s a table for pep-band and drum line, but not for color guard so I wanted to ask, “Well why not?”” said Delosier. “So me and Craig [Hlavac], the club advisor, started collaborating about how to begin and how to get materials and people.”

The Winter Guard International website defines modern color guard as a “combination of the use of flags, sabers, mock rifles, and other equipment, as well as dance and other interpretive movement.” DiMaggio said it is “basically spinning a flag, but you can incorporate dance into it—it’s like an art-sport.”
SCSU student and member since 2010, Stephanie Eburg, said team work is extremely important and everyone has to work together to relay their message to the audience.
“A lot of people compare it to cheerleading, but what’s different from cheerleading is that instead of using vocal, you’re using the flag as your words,” said Eburg.

The color guard performs at football games and some basketball games, according to Delosier, but the girls said they hope to have more opportunities to perform throughout the year.
“Compared to where we started,” said Eburg, “I think we’ve gotten better with the attention we receive, probably because when we first started, nobody knew who we were. But now, when we perform at the commencement ceremony and stuff, people are like, “Oh, they’re actually something that we need!””
Despite all her responsibilities as coordinator, delegator, organizer, Delosier said the biggest challenge is gaining enough interest from students. (SP #4)
“Even people who have had experience people come and say, “Oh, I miss it so much!” and we’re like, “Do it” and they’re like, “Nah.” They have too much on their plate, which I understand, but getting the name out—we just started getting good at,” said Delosier.
Both DiMaggio and Delosier said they would like to be able to compete against other guards

and Delosier said she hopes that the new coach, Jennifer Rivera, will “broaden [their] experience level and broaden [their] stationary setting” so that more people will be interested in joining to compete.
Although the color guard currently consists of fewer than 10 members, Delosier said it can be difficult to schedule practices around everyone’s schedules and to fuse everyone’s ideas into the choreography, but they make it work and in the end, as Eburg said, “Everyone has to be friends; we all have to be friends. We all have to work together.”

Because the color guard is just beginning to develop at SCSU, Delosier said that they have the freedom to experiment with different techniques and to not just follow traditional routines.
“I think we have kind of free rein of what to do rather than the structured set of everything that’s already been paved for us so we get to kind of mess around, fool around, try everything that we can so we’re always open to anything new,” said Delosier.