Newtown High School Winter Guard and Winter Percussion hosted over fifty teams to perform their shows at their home show on March 8th. The Winter Percussion had their show first, with Shelton, Naugatuck, Cheshire in attendance,. The Newtown team was the last to perform, and accepted their trophy immediately after where Newtown placed first out of eight teams. Their show, entitled “The Library of Life,” highlighted the importance of reading and the new life that reading can give us.
Afterwards, the Winter Guard had their program where 32 teams participated. The Newtown Varsity team went on at 8:09pm. The varsity show, entitled “Clue” is a spin on the Clue movie and its characters. They placed first out of four teams. Since they were not competing, The Newtown junior varsity performed an exhibition. Their show, “Tale of the Trees,” tells the story of the Lorax. They performed at 9:30pm.
“We won first! It was great! And there weren’t any major mishaps…” Newtown High School junior Nikki Mukka shared with a laugh.
The percussion and guard members acted as ambassadors for the other teams attending, and the school was filled with fans and performers alike.
The event was a success, with dozens of volunteer students and parents running the bake sale, the snack shack, and helping teams around the school.
“I had a great time! I thought it was a very successful event overall. It was a massive undertaking. I’ve been to a bunch of winter guard shows before, and this was the size of championships basically. And the fact that we were able to pull it off is a testament to the district and the parent organization and how hard everybody works to kind of get it done and get the event running so smoothly. It was nice to be able to have so many people from other schools visiting Newtown and seeing how nice our school is, and supporting our programs,” Newtown Band Director Elizabeth Dandeneau, shared.
Seniors Derek Jopp, Jason Voegeli, and Gracie Ballard were recognized from the percussion, and senior Shae Farago was recognized from the Newtown color guard team. All four have been involved in the program for years, and have devoted a lot of time to making each show better than the last.
Towards the end of the event, colleges like UCONN and UNH performed their own programs. Finally, the CT Tigers, a team for those with disabilities, performed their show Defying Gravity. With help from other color guard members from high school and college teams, the members with disabilities followed along to put on an amazing show.
Overall, the program brought together hundreds of people and raised a lot of money for the Newtown arts programs.
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