It’s friday night at MVHS’s first home football game. The buzzer rings, signaling halftime. As the scuffed up bodies of the MVHS varsity football team jog over towards the sidelines, twirls of color, pointed rifles and flowing purple gowns take over the football field. The song begins and suddenly, the field is alive with an eye-catching display of rhythm and color, bodies moving swiftly along to the beat of the marching band. The graceful performers are none other than MVHS Color Guard.

Last Friday, Sept. 8, Color Guard had their first performance of the year. As the marching band was only re-established this past year, this was Color Guard’s first time performing with a marching band in seven years. Freshman Henry Zhai, a new member of the team, describes how he felt proud to be part of the first performance with both Marching Band and Color Guard.

“It was the first performance, first time we had a marching band and Color Guard together because we re-established it,” Zhai said. “And it was really good — we showed people what they missed out on the last couple of years.”

The team performed to the first of three movements that they have been practicing, called “Shades of Purple.” While the show went off without a hitch, junior and captain Harshita Rao believes there’s still room for improvement.

“I feel like if we clean the show more and work on it a lot more, then it’ll look so much better next time,” Rao said.

Coach Grantis Peranda agrees, but added that the team improves each time they perform, cleaning up certain parts that they made mistakes with last time.

“I would even say that was ten times better, right?” Peranda said to his team as they reconvened after their second performance, referring to their improvement from the first.

The team had been practicing for weeks for this first showcase, making sure that all their routines were sharp and synchronized. Rao describes that activities like Marching Band and Color Guard require a significant amount of coordination.

“You have to step together, step in time with the same foot,” Rao said. “And then the flags all have to be together and the rifles all have to be together. And if it looks really coordinated and then one person is off, it looks really bad. So you have to make everyone perfect, because there’s no ‘most of the people are amazing so it’s an amazing thing.’ Everyone needs to be perfect otherwise it doesn’t look good.”

Even though they practiced long and hard for this first recital, Rao says it’s definitely not the biggest one of the year yet. She hopes that their practice will pay off towards her larger goal — performing at the district’s Marching Band Exposition in October.

“It’s the big marching band thing from our district and all the schools in our district go,” Rao said. “You perform for each other and it’s like a really big deal. So that’s what everyone in our marching band is really working towards, so the football games [are] kind of like practice performances until then.”

Still, for newcomers like Zhai, this first performance was a big deal. Even though he didn’t perform this time, he felt just as nervous as those who were.

“Everybody was like, ‘Oh my god. Why am I so nervous? We’re not even performing,’” Zhai said. “It was basically like we were performing because we were all in uniform, all decked out, and we just sat there and watched, cheering them on. It was a pretty big crowd, first home football game, so definitely felt some nervousness even though we were just sitting there.”

Despite the nervousness they may have felt, both Zhai and Rao agreed that the performance went well — for the first time, at least.

“It was good for a first performance, but we could work a lot more and do a lot better,” Rao said.

Flip through the photos below to view some moments from the team’s second performance at the second home football game on Sept. 15, another one of the many they will be performing this season.