Reina Dayrit, a senior at Amador, is completing her 14th season of the color guard this year. She started doing guard since the sixth grade and has been doing it ever since.

“The middle school I attended, Wells Middle School, had a Colorguard. They did many parades competitions, so I joined them” said Reina Dayrit (’20).

Reina moved to the Pleasanton district when she graduated middle school. She had been doing seven seasons of the guard before she did her first fall season of the marching band as a freshman. Since she has both perspectives of middle school and high school guard, she believes that there are lots of differences that separate one from the other.

“It is [middle school guard]  much more detailed and much harder. Middle school basically teaches you the basics and prepares you for high school color guard. For High school, they usually go more in-depth in the basics and teach you more stuff like cool choreography. They really push you to the limits” said Dayrit.

Dayrit has been doing guard for almost six years, and because of that, she has made tremendous improvements since when she first started out.

“For me, I definitely think that I have improved on my technique because in middle school we didn’t really focus a lot on technique. They didn’t focus a lot on specific things, it was more general. But when I came to Amador I realized that it was a lot different in high school, especially knowing our coaches. They go really hard on all the techniques and help us improve various skills” said Dayrit.

All these years of training have helped Reina become a member of the professional Blue Devils B Guard also known as BDB.

“All the practice has really helped me in the long run and helped me get into BDB. BDB is basically an open class drum corps team outside school” said Dayrit.

Dayrit encourages interested students to try out for color guard and shares some of her own experiences about it.

“For those who want to try it out, I know it seems odd and unusual and might be out of your comfort zone, it definitely was for me, but  I’ve improved and gained some skills that I use a lot in day to day life like hand and eye coordination. I can use other skills like that outside guard which can be really useful,” said Dayrit.

We wish our graduating seniors to have a successful Guard life ahead with plenty of more competitions in the future.