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ROSS TOWNSHIP — Stephanie Wigal has been getting a lot creepier lately, but she’s really had to work at it.
At a recent Ross High School Band of Class practice, Wigal took the center of the field and struck a pose along with the rest of the color guards — head ducked, arms crossed at the chest, feet crossed at the ankles.
One might expect them to emerge from this clearly uncomfortable stance as graceful birds or something equally lovely, but instead, as the minor key music swells, they break their pose but remain crouched, skulking and lurking across the steaming blacktop that serves as the band’s rehearsal stage, doing their best to look menacing.
Their show, “Through Darkened Sleepy Hollow,” uses music inspired by the classic Washington Irving story (not the Johnny Depp movie), and it is the color guard’s job to give a visual interpretation of the music. “To let the people see what they’re hearing,” according to color guard director Laura Mills.
“The general effect here is that you make the show scary or not from the very beginning,” said band director Dick Roemer over the PA system from his perch in the scaffolding along the sidelines. “You have to be actresses.”
A little later in the program, Wigal — who is the color guard’s co-captain along with her best friend Kayla Koch — takes center stage again, this time as a soloist, using all the skills she’s acquired through years of dance, baton and music practice.
Her solo is only a few bars long, but all eyes will be on her and her bright red flag, so she’s a little worried that she’s not creepy enough.
“Other years, the music was more up-beat, so you could smile and be sweet,” Wigal said. “But this is more Cirque du Soleil creepy stuff.
“Most people see me as happy-go-lucky person. It’s kind of hard for me to put my mind in that kind of place.”
Color guards help the audience see the music
It’s two weeks before the Ross Band of Class has its first competition in Tipp City, and there are still a few bugs to work out in the program.
“There’s a great big hole out there in the color guards,” said band director Dick Roemer, as he watches practice from a set of scaffolding about 30 feet in the air. “I could drive a dump truck between those that are right and those that are not.”
Color guard captain Stephanie Wigal trots to the sidelines, consults her notebook, and returns to the field to adjust a line of girls carrying bright white flags near the back of the practice field — which is really a parking lot painted like a football gridiron.
“There are a lot of gaps,” Wigal said later, explaining that the choreography to the band’s show, “Through Darkened Sleepy Hollow,” was created by a someone outside of the school. They are at a point where they are fine-tuning — or “cleaning” — the routine.
“There are things that she had (in the choreography) that we just couldn’t do when we got on the field. So it’s kind of stressful to be re-working the choreography this close to competition ,” she said.
But not to blame it all on the choreographer, Wigal said that because so much of it is repeating similar moves that it’s easy for the 19 girls in the color guard to lose their place when it comes to the minute variations.
“It’s the little things that make the difference,” she said.
Wigal said being a captain of the Band of Class color guard was something she had been looking toward since her freshman year.
“I wanted to keep bringing something to being a color guard,” she said, “to have something to work toward rather than just doing a show every year.”
But she confessed that leadership, at least in this case, is not really what she thought it was going to be.
“At first, I thought it was just making sure that the routine runs OK, that the girls are in their spots and doing what they’re supposed to be doing on the field,” she said.
“But it’s really more of a friendship thing. I didn’t know it would be as much about personal relationships.”
Nor did she know it meant being something of a mother hen. Teenage girls, ever weight-conscious, tend to not eat during the school day, which can be the source of serious problems when they get out on the mock-football field.
“I have to make sure they’re eating and drinking enough,” Wigal said, “so I usually bring food to practice and go down the line: 'Did you eat? Did you eat? Did you eat?’
“If they don’t eat, they’ll end up weak or sick and they’ll have to sit out of practice. Some of them have had to sit out an entire practice, and that means there’s two or three hours of work that they’re missing.”
She only has to turn “harsh,” as she put it, when they don’t pay attention. When a marching band is in rehearsal, the director is often giving instructions to a particular section, and when it’s not the color guard, their attention tends to wander, and they chat to break the boredom.
“Most of the time, I’m on good terms with everyone,” Wigal said. “Sometimes, I have to be harsh, but I try to make sure that it’s for a good reason.”
It helps that she’s known five of the 19 color guard members since freshman year and they have become close through the years — and the younger students look up to her.
“They all respect me, and I try to not give them a reason to not respect me,” she said. “If I’m harsh with them, I try to apologize and tell them that it’s nothing personal but for the best of everyone.”
Color guard director Laura Mills said that she looks for three things when choosing a captain: a strong leader, an enthusiastic performer and an individual with a keen eye to help her keep track of things on the field while she watches from above, alongside Roemer in their eagle’s nest.
“You can see that Stephanie has color guard in her blood,” Mills said. “She wants to do well and she wants the group to do well. She notices things to help people achieve what she’s been achieving over the last four years.”
Being in color guard, Wigal said, is a “happy medium” from many of her interests as a performer.
“I danced from the time I could walk until about the seventh grade, and I was also a gymnast,” she said. “My sister and I both wanted to try batons. My mom was a color guard in high school when she was here, so it’s something we could all share.”
The band has been working on “Through Darkened Sleepy Hollow” since band camp in early August, and Wigal said that she’s getting a little nervous as it gets closer to their first competition.
“The thing is, you don’t get a good outside opinion until you go to competition,” she said. “We perform for football games, but most of the audience doesn’t really understand what this is about. They’ll say, 'That was really good,’ and we appreciate that they enjoy it, but it doesn’t really help us when it comes to preparing for competition.”
Contact this reporter at (513) 820-2188 or rjones@coxohio.com.
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