17th March 2002
British Championships Report
The 2002 Winterguard contests came to an exciting end on Saturday 16th March at the Brentwood International Centre in Essex with all three of our Guards 'fighting' to hold onto their position from the short, but no less exhilarating, WinterGuard United Kingdom season.
The 13 members of the Senior Guard were the first of our units to perform as they competed in the morning Open Class Preliminaries to decide the order of performance for that nights Final event. Whilst the girls gave another excellent display, the little sparkle that "makes it special" seemed to be missing and, although holding onto 3rd Place (out of 9), the Guard in 4th had closed the gap to within a couple of points. A long wait now faced them ready for the evening!
After the last couple of years disappointments of dropping places at the end of season, this year the Rugrats had a another tough job at hand as they had only competed against about half of the other Guards in their class during the season. We need not have worried as the 13 youngsters performed their 'Daisy Chain' show, to Don't Tell Me by Madonna, the best they had all season and held onto their 3rd Place (out of 7) and came away with a Bronze Medal.
The Juniors had been happily sitting in 2nd place all season until the shock of dropping a place at their last contest. The pressure was therefore on in the biggest class in WGUK and the 13 members really put on the performance of the year. Their 'Stars' production, performing to Northern Star by Mel C, has come on leaps and bounds since the Preview Evening at the beginning of January and they were rewarded for this achievement by pushing themselves back into 2nd Place (out of 14) and a Silver Medal.
And so onto the Seniors Finals performance. Their 'Floor In 4 Acts' show, using different versions of Windmills Of My Mind, has continually been enhanced throughout the season to keep them sitting within the top 3 but it was close in the morning so what could they do in the evening. Well the crowd said it all, the standing ovation from a large portion of the audience showed that the 'sparkle' was back and the girls pulled away and got their well deserved 3rd Place and a Bronze Medal.
So, the 2002 season ended with all 3 Guards coming away medal winners - a magnificent achievement, not only for the members but also the instructional staff and all the background people that go together to make the Southern Knights one of the premier organisitions in this activity.
Huge thanks to everyone that has helped and supported throughout these past months - without this there would be no Southern Knights.
Good luck to the members that will be spending the summer performing within the Drum Corps movement and in the meantime we continue to offer an all year round activity and look forward to 2003!