As I crumple over junior Sam Schoening one last time, I hear applause filling the University of Dayton Arena. While I stand back up, I see thousands of people, all on their feet and cheering. I look up and to my right, and I see myself on one of the arena’s giant screens, crying.
April 4 marked the longest, but also best, day of my life.
My day started at 6 a.m., and I woke up knowing it consisted of two major events: rehearsal and our semi-finals performance.
I got dressed for rehearsal, ate a crummy breakfast and did my hair and makeup. I did in fact almost forget to bring my costume with me (which meant that I wouldn’t have had it for the entire day), but we won’t talk about that.
Then came the 8-10 a.m. rehearsal. I won’t lie, it wasn’t our best rehearsal. The gym was hot and run-down, and we were tired from the day before. There was also another group we had to share the space with, and they kept blasting their absurd show music. It was truly an experience like no other.
At the end of the rehearsal, we did an equipment run-through, which meant that we did all of our choreography in place instead of running around the floor. We’re getting to the end of the show, and I’m doing my partner work with Schoening.
He dips me at the end. My back makes an audible crack, and I’m down for the count. My luck could not have been any worse.
One of my coaches, Halima Hussain, comes over and asks me, “Are you okay?” to which I replied with a somewhat unconvincing “yeah.” And I did end up making it through the day, it only took four Ibuprofen and practically gluing an ice pack to my back.
Rehearsal ends, and it’s time to start locking in for our semi-finals performance. We arrive at Nutter Center and meet up with one of our previous coaches, Class of 2018 graduate Sammy Lawson. We watched the other group he coached, and soon enough it was our turn to take the floor.
My semi-finals performance certainly wasn’t my best. My feet and my flag kept catching and getting stuck on my skirt, but I managed to finish the run without dropping any tosses. I was convinced that semi-finals was our last performance. It wasn’t atrocious by any means, but it didn’t seem good enough to make it into finals, especially at Winter Guard International Worlds. At that point, I was sobbing. I thought it was all over. I hugged all my teammates, we took a group picture and I ate the iconic WGI Oranges for my first time.
The top 20 Scholastic A groups out of the 56 in semi-finals advance to finals. There were four rounds of Scholastic A groups, and we performed around the middle of the second round, so we had a ways to go until all of the scores were announced.
After what felt like two hours (though I can’t be sure as time felt like it bled together that day), our round of scores finally came out. Starting at the very top of the list, we read each school that would advance to finals. I didn’t expect to see our school until much further down the list, but after a single scroll, there we were. Lafayette High School (MO). 6th place in our round with a score of 88.055, and, at the moment, 11th overall. Nine places ahead of the last qualifying group, 20th. Though it was better than I had expected, my heart sank. With two rounds of scores still waiting to be released, I wasn’t sure that our current 11th place standing would be enough to land us in finals. I could feel myself giving up on the hope of making finals.
After a couple hours at Nutter, we drove to the University of Dayton Arena to watch some Independent World semi-finals. When we arrived at the arena, guard parent Dawn Hagen went over our plan for the next few hours.
“We’re going to change out of costume and go watch other groups. If we have to come back to the bus to change again, it’ll be crazy,” she said.
We all chuckled amongst ourselves about the idea of having to change back into costume. We weren’t making finals…right?
Eventually, round three scores came out. We were now ranked 17th overall. Only three groups in the last round of results could score better than us if we wanted to make finals. At this point, I definitely thought we weren’t making it to finals. I tried to hold back the next wave of tears I felt creeping in and instead focus on enjoying the rest of the night with my friends.
This is when the night took an interesting turn.
After watching a few Independent World guards, there was a break in between rounds, and almost the entire arena was cleared out. Senior Ally McWatters suggested we move down a few rows of seats so we could be closer to the floor and get a better view of the upcoming groups. Senior Tose Toriola and I scoped out a few rows below, and the rest of the group said they would join us down there later.
Toriola and I were just making small talk, catching up on life and trying to ease our nerves about the scores. The last round of Scholastic A scores were set to come out any minute now, and my anxiety was at an all-time high.
I kept refreshing and refreshing the scores page on my phone, when suddenly the scores page vanished entirely. What was it with my luck? Thankfully, Toriola could still see the scores on her phone, so we kept staring at her phone. A blue iPhone 16 was about to display the fate of our season.
That’s when I heard it. Everyone else in the group, still sitting a few rows above us, suddenly start screaming and gasping. Their phones had loaded faster than ours and they had discovered the results.
Toriola death-grabbed my bicep, shaking me to no end, “we did it,” she said.
We made WGI Finals.
Exactly three groups had placed higher than us in the final round. We were 20th overall. We had actually done it. It felt like a dream then, and it still does now. Toriola and I booked it up the stairs, back to the rest of the group. On the way up, I passed senior Andi Getman and yelled, “we made finals!” She was just as shocked as I was.
I can’t put into words how that moment felt. Everyone was hugging and crying, and all of our parents were there with us. It was such a surreal experience. Others nearby were turning to look at us because we were shouting in a pretty much empty arena, but we paid no attention to that. I could not believe we had actually done it.
After sprinting out of the arena and quickly getting back into costume again, we had quite a bit of downtime. So what did we do? Sing “What Makes You Beautiful” by One Direction, our anthem of the season. Everyone joined in this time, usually it’s McWatters and I carrying on the vocals. I tried not to get emotional, knowing it was our last time we would be singing it before a show.
Eventually it came time to warm up. Our director, Evan Coonrod, and our other coach, Robert Jordan, split from the group to do soundcheck, so we had Hussain and Lawson for our entire body warmup and majority of our equipment warmup. It was the first time I had Hussain and Lawson lead a pre-show warm up rather than Coonrod. It was nice to have a switch up.
This was my fourth year at UD, but I had never been to the section of the arena where performers warmed up. A completely separate entrance from the one spectators use, the area was reserved only for Scholastic A finalists and their staff at that time. When we arrived at the warmup entrance, tons of people were there, all saying things like “welcome finalists!” and “congratulations on making finals!”
The only thing I could do was grin from ear to ear. I had never been called a WGI finalist before, and hearing those words was so rewarding.
Before our body warmup, we had a brief waiting period, and Hussain had us all go one-by-one down the line and share our favorite memories from the season. I tried not to get emotional hearing everyone recap on our season. It didn’t feel like it was about to end in just a few minutes. When it was time for us to go to body warmup, I caught occasional glimpses of the audience I was about to be performing for. It was massive, but I felt calmer than I expected.
We got through body warmup and moved on to equipment. We got to go to the famous tent to warm up, the tent where the best of the best groups warm up their hands before taking the floor. Obviously there was nothing to the tent itself, but the meaning behind it and actually getting to warm up there meant so much more.
Our performance was creeping closer, and I was fighting so many emotions at this point. Nerves, anxiety, excitement, sadness, exhaustion. We started walking down the giant tunnel that led to the performance floor, and I just remember being in disbelief. I had walked down the tunnel multiple times before to help other groups pull out their tarps, but for once, I wasn’t helping. I was actually performing.
Moments before taking the floor, we got in our pre-show huddle one last time, and I was holding hands with senior Amanda Qualley and sophomore Emma Hagen, two of my closest friends on the team. Coonrod had talked for a while, and surprisingly, I didn’t cry too much.
I can’t say the same for when it was Hussain’s turn to speak. She started getting emotional. I was trying so hard to keep it together, but Hussain had done so much to help me grow during my guard career. She joined our staff when I was a freshman, and it was so hard to grasp my mind around the fact that I wouldn’t be seeing her, or really anyone on the team, pretty much every day. I had spent four consecutive years with some of these people, and Hussain was one of them.
After the staff had finished talking, Coonrod opened up the circle for us to share anything we wanted.
“Have fun, we have worked for every single moment to be here. We have put in the blood, we have put in the sweat, we have put in the tears. We have put in countless hours and so much work to be here,” I said. “You guys have earned this and I am so proud of every single one of you. It has been such an honor to spin with each of you.”
After one final chant, cheering “too hot to drop!” it was go-time. We walked the rest of the way down the tunnel, and a giant black curtain was obstructing my view of the performance floor. I heard another group testing their music, lots of chatter in the audience and my heart pounding in my ears. We waited to take the floor for what felt like hours.
Soon enough, the curtain pulled. I remember asking someone, I forgot who, “we’re actually going right now?” I wiped my tears and took one last deep breath.
As I took the floor one last time, I also took in everything around me. People surrounded us on just about every side. They were close up and far, far away. I had never performed live for thousands of people before, and that was such a terrifyingly thrilling sight to take in.
The night before, we had to help a group called Pride of Cincinnati fold their tarp after their prelims performance. As we walked out onto the UD performance floor to fold the tarp, I remember jokingly saying, “look up at the lights, we may have to perform here tomorrow night!” to which others around me laughed at. I never knew that that joke would actually become very, very real in less than 24 hours.
As I set my equipment on the floor and picked up my purple rose for the start of the show, I looked around at my teammates. I remember looking at seniors Gracie Hagen, McWatters, Qualley and Toriola, my fellow seniors who were with me since my first days of guard back in the summer of 2021 and stuck with me the whole way through. Pretty soon after, everyone was in their starting positions, and the ominous opening hum of our music began to play over the speakers.
I don’t think I realized until about halfway through the show that we were actually performing in finals. The beginning was a little nerve-wracking, since I didn’t know if any lights would screw up my tosses, and the audience was slightly intimidating at first. But eventually, I overcame those nerves and just performed my heart out.
After Schoening and I’s partner work, we split to our opposite corners of the floor. As I approached the stage to grab the black rose I would “die” with at the end of the show, I saw my mom in the audience. She was crying. Sobbing, actually. I remember doing my choreo and seeing her looking at me as tears streamed down her face. Reaching for the rose, I looked at her and mouthed “I love you.”
Before I knew it, the show ended. My four years, my eight seasons with the Lafayette guard, all of that ended too. Such a big part of my life had suddenly concluded.
After hitting my final pose, with me “dying” for a second time on top of Schoening, I remember just standing up and taking in the applause. Normally I would be booking it to help pick up equipment or to quickly fold up our tarp to carry it out. But not this time. I just stood there, looking at the thousands of people in the audience, standing and clapping and cheering for us. It was such a glorious feeling. I felt like I was on top of the world, and I would give anything to relive those few seconds again.
As I looked over to the opposite side of the arena, I saw myself on one of the jumbotrons overhead. A cameraman was recording me as I just stood there and cried.
Then came the hard part: leaving. I didn’t want to leave. For a lot of March, I was burned out with guard and wanted a break from it. But as I walked off of the performance floor one last time, I suddenly didn’t want it to be over.
As I walked up the tunnel, I hugged my teammates. I hugged Coonrod and Lawson. I hugged my parents. I don’t know how my makeup stayed in tact as much as it did.
When I made it to the top of the tunnel, I grabbed a few more oranges as I left UD Arena. We went straight to the merch tent to grab a shirt we saw the day before during our shopping endeavors. The shirts were light pink, and said “MAKE FINALS, NOT WAR” around a rose, which was very fitting for our show. It was a great keepsake and will always be a reminder of my fantastic senior season.
As we entered UD again to watch groups, I remember trying to wrap my head around the whole season. We went through a lot of uncertainty with our scores throughout the season, with judges having varying opinions on what they liked and what they didn’t like with every performance. We only placed first once, and that was an easier local competition, and we were ranked 60th nationally going into the WGI Worlds. I remember the doubt I felt about how our season would end. How I was preparing myself to not even making semi-finals.
We went from being ranked 60th, to placing 23rd after prelims, to 20th after semi-finals, and ending in 19th place.
Going into the competition, it felt as though we would need a miracle to make finals, but it had actually happened.
Lafayette’s 2025 Varsity Winter Guard ended their season, “A Rose, By Any Other Name,” in 19th place with a score of 83.815. Out of around 130 guards around the country who competed against us at WGI Worlds, our little team from Wildwood, Missouri placed 19th. I’m also now part of the highest scoring guard in Lafayette history, and I couldn’t have asked for a more memorable way to go out with this group.
Stacey Scott • Apr 21, 2025 at 5:22 pm
It was a very memorable day!