By Krista Fog

After winning States, Walled Lake Central’s Winter Guard team headed to Winter Guard International (WGI) competition, held this year in Dayton, Ohio from April 3 until April 5.

“I am very proud of the team,” said senior captain of the Open-Guard team Taylor Kucharski. “Even though we didn’t make it to semi-finals like last year, we prepared all season for this and couldn’t ask for more.”

“Our run was great,” said Winter Guard director Mike Novak. “Our overall place isn’t important, but the performance that the team put on was the best we could’ve done.”

WLC has both a Scholastic Open-Guard and a Scholastic A-Class. Each class performed, but only the Open-Class made it to preliminaries. In sports terms, the Open-Class is similar varsity and the A-Class is similar to JV.

Both teams had stellar performances and should be very proud of their achievements. Over 400 high schools competed in WGI, including several schools from Japan. WLC Open-Guard made it all the way to preliminaries and performed at the Nutter Arena in Dayton.