Schaumburg flag team takes it to the top
Twelve years after Schaumburg High School started a flags team - with just five girls - its Starlites now are tops in the state.
The 18 members, ranging from freshmen through seniors, won both the tall flags and lyrical categories at the TEAMDance Illinois state championships on Sunday in Peoria, on their way to be named state flag division champions.
"I've watched them since day one, and to see them move up the ranks and uproot some of the top teams in the state is really impressive," said Shayne Bullen, Schaumburg assistant principal.
Fans in the community see them performing at home football and basketball games and leading the band in parades, including at Septemberfest, but their competition season stretches from October through March.
This was their first state championship in flags, and on Monday the team and their coaches presented the impressively sculpted glass trophies to Schaumburg Principal Tim Little during a special assembly.
"We're thrilled," said head coach Aimee Webber, a special-education teacher at the school and a former flag team member at Hoffman Estates High School. "We're absolutely ecstatic."
In tall flags, Fremd finished second while Palatine placed third, and in lyrical, Fremd tied for second place followed by Palatine in fourth. Stevenson's flag team won the short flags title, with Rolling Meadows in second and Hoffman Estates in third.
The Starlites performed something of a groundbreaking routine in their tall flags category, taking Samurai-like music from the "Le Reve" show in Las Vegas to drive their storyline about two warring factions that come together in the end.
"It's a fierce, hard-edged, gutsy routine," Webber said. But what really set it apart was the tarp they performed on, laid out on the competition floor. It featured the ancient Chinese images of yin and yang, symbolizing the factions' coming together at the end.
However, its symbolism went beyond their dramatic ending, Webber said. "We were the only team to use a tarp," she said. "We wanted to do something different and change the face of color guard."
To pull it off, they had exactly one minute to lay the tarp and one minute to remove it after their three-minute routine. While the use of floor tarps in winter color guard competitions are common, they had not emerged in TDI until Schaumburg's unveiling. Webber, who had coached one summer for a color guard camp, knew of their impact.
"I don't think it gained us any extra points," she said, "but it gave the girls some extra confidence knowing they were doing something no one else was doing."
In their lyrical routine, the Starlites showed their classical ballet side, performing a more elegant routine to the song "Oceano," sung in Italian by Josh Groban.
Winning the state championship was rewarding for Webber, as well as her assistant coach Megan Doran, a Schaumburg math teacher, and their choreographer, Billy Steiner.
Webber and Moran had served as consultants when state officials formed TEAMDance Illinois four years ago. "Our goal was to make flags an important art form in that circuit," Webber said. "They've supported us every step of the way."