Color guards fine-tune their routines

Fiona Slade, 17, will be the first to admit that color guard competitions maybe don't create the same drama as other high school sports.

"Sometimes the team in general gets pretty nervous, but it's not too bad," the Naperville North High School senior said Sunday outside a second-floor hallway at Waubonsie Valley High School.

Slade's "Northern Lights" color guard team was among 24 teams - some from as far away as Wisconsin and Indiana - to compete Sunday at the Midwest Color Guard Circuit Competition at the Aurora school. The circuit's held several competitions already this year, and teams see it as a good way to practice and get critiqued before the championships at the end of March. The teams compete in many different classifications and categories.

Karen O'Shea, one of the parent organizers of Sunday's competition, said the event was meant to raise several thousand dollars for the school's color guard. Several hundred people attended.

"We've been very lucky," said O'Shea, whose daughter is a co-captain for the squad. "It's a good balance of competition, but we make it as fun as possible for the girls."

For Michelle Hardy, who was finishing warm-up exercises with Carl Sandburg High School's squad, coaching her old high school alma mater was a chance at reliving some fonder moments from her own past.

"I was a founding member of the team at Carl Sandburg High School and continued it in Illinois," said Hardy, an Orland Park resident. "It was a great experience."