Q Goes to Worlds

The Color Guard team poses for a photo at the Winter Guard International. Photo Courtesy / Nellie Youn
The Color Guard team poses for a photo at the Winter Guard International. Photo Courtesy / Nellie Youn
The Color Guard team poses for a photo at the Winter Guard International.
Photo Courtesy / Nellie Youn

By Melissa Valentovic
SC Staff Writer

East Stroudsburg University’s competitive indoor color guard team, Q, will compete at the Winter Guard International (WGI) world championships in Dayton, Ohio from Thursday, April 16 to Saturday, April 18.

The competition consists of the color guard portion, as well as the indoor percussion portion that took place April 9 to April 11.

According to Q co-captain, ESU freshman business management major, Joey Talios, the teams that compete at the world championships are teams that are nationally ranked from all over the United States, as well as teams from Canada. One team from Japan attending this year, called Aimachi, usually competes at the championships every other year.

Talios said that advancing to the final round of competition is “the ultimate goal for indoor color guards.” The team’s show this season is entitled “This World Is Not Conclusion.”

According to WGI’s website, there are two divisions in the competitions: the scholastic division (teams that are based and run through a high school) and the independent division (teams that are run and owned separately from a school).

Within these two divisions, teams also compete in either the A, Open, or World class. Q competes in the Independent A class.

Q made it to semi-finals in 2012 and made the final round the last two years. Talios said the team’s goal this year is to not only make it to the final round, but to hopefully make it into the top five in the final placement. He says walking onto the floor in the University of Dayton arena before the final round and being overwhelmed by the amount of people in the audience is his favorite moment in the competition.

Talios said, “Knowing this is the FINAL performance of the season is a warm feeling tinted with anxiety and sadness.”

He continued, “All in a matter of two minutes it hits you, you are a WGI finalist getting ready for your final run. The people that you are going to perform with in a matter of moments will change once the show is over. You may never see some of them again, and you will not perform the same show again. Then, the music starts playing and you give it your all. You dig down deeper and then just let your emotions spill onto the floor. You wear them not on your sleeve, but in the choreography and performance.”

Talios also said he loves feeding off of the audience’s reactions before, during and after his performance.

He said, “You let every member in the audience feel as you are the medium between the music and the emotion that it portrays.”

Email Melissa at:
mvalentovi@live.esu.edu