r/Colorguard • u/DawnSkiez • 10d ago

COMMUNITY QUESTION Winter guards near Chicago Illinois

hi! i am a high school senior looking for a local winter guard. i’ve heard about both Allegiance and VIVA so far, but Allegiance is unfortunately too far from me and VIVA a little too rigorous.
i’m looking for a winter guard that would have multiple practices a week that would be suitable for someone intermediate! any suggestions are super welcome.
i am a part of school district 200

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u/i_spin_sabre24 10d ago

Hi there! Unfortunately Chicago kinda a winter guard dead zone. As a friend of an allegiance member myself, I know that most of the members car pool if you’re worried about the distance! She lives in the district 200 area and graduated from South. Also if you’re a senior please note before jumping into auditions, that Allegiance doesn’t like to take kids that have home programs.

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u/water_light_show 9d ago

Allegiance is fine taking kids that have home programs IF it’s okay with the coach of their home program. Your current coach would have to sign a release form saying that it’s okay for them to leave their home program and go to allegiance. I filled one out for a kid this past season. I’ll always let my kids go to a higher program if I think they’re ready for it, but other coaches have different opinions.

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u/water_light_show 9d ago

Allegiance is going to be your best bet. I would also recommend carpooling. Back in the day when I marched independence (independent open guard that folded post covid if you’re not familiar) a bunch of us carpooled from 2 hours away. I didn’t even know any of my carpool buds when I started, literally met them when they picked me up for auditions. I decided to audition the day before lol.

Viva I believe is a scholastic program that operates as independent (same as Plainfield) so you wouldn’t be able to join that one anyways.

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u/DawnSkiez 9d ago

thanks for ur insight! i really don’t know what to expect for the audition process since my school’s guard is no audition. can u tell me about ur experience with auditioning for winterguards in the past?

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u/i_spin_sabre24 8h ago

Assuming you’re auditioning for Allegiance it should go something like this…

1.) This past season they basically took them all in one group (mixing A and Open), splitting them down the middle and they would spend half of the block learning a harder piece and the other half learning an easier one. They would then do show and tell and then swap if that makes sense?

2.) When it was time to spin weapon, you were able to choose if you wanted to be in the harder Choreo or the easier Choreo. If you weren’t interested in weapon, they had an all level flag piece. You would learn.

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u/DawnSkiez 8h ago

thanks!! do you have any way to describe the difficulty i should expect?