www.colorguardeducator.com

[Intro by Catina Anderson]

CGE readers may remember that we've done a small series of question and answer style articles featuring color guard educators in the past.  If you check out these articles, they are rich with inside information, insight and tips.  But they were also REALLY long!  Realizing that most of us don't have huge chunks of time to read long articles we have been deliberating on a better format for these articles which we still think are really interesting.  CGE contributor Chris Casteel came up with a shortened interview format that we're going to give a try. 

Chris is the education coordinator for the Winter Guard Association of Southern California so she has started a series of local interviews in WGASC which the subjects and WGASC were gracious enough to allow us to also repost here for all of you! We hope to feature long-time educators from a variety of regions here on CGE in addition to Chris's WGASC educators.

The interviews will give you a brief introduction to the educator and ask them to share some of their insight into what has given them success and/or longevity.  Where do they find inspiration?  How did they grow their programs?  How do they balance the demands of the competition season with daily life?  And What is something they learned along the way they wish they'd known from the start?  

The first interview comes from California's WGASC winter guard circuit- James (Jim) Goodrich who currently works with El Toro, Fountain Valley and Mayfair High Schools.  Thank you Chris, Jim and WGASC for sharing your experience and insight with color guard educators everywhere!

"Live to Spin" documentary producer Anna Jakubowski sat down with Alan and Florence Dyck, the directors of the Pacificaires of British Columbia, Canada to talk about the history of their organization, the challenges of building a program in an area where winter guard is largely unknown and their advice for other instructors who might be facing the same challenges.  Color Guard Educators is grateful that they sat down to share their experiences in the busy weeks leading up to WGI World Championships.  You can catch their A Class guard's preliminary performance on the Fan Network Thursday, April 2nd at 5:37 p.m.

CGE recently had the opportunity to interview Diamante Director, Mario Ramirez.  Diamante is an independent guard located in Southern California.  The WGASC is its home circuit.  In addition, Diamante has been newly promoted to World Class at this year’s WGI championships in Dayton, Ohio.  Although the success of Diamante is considerable, Mr. Ramirez continues to fully embrace our activity by designing and manufacturing color guard costumes under the label of ‘M.Ra Couture’ and instructing several scholastic color guards as well.  At 27 years of age, he is certainly making his mark on the landscape of the color guard world.

We took time to talk with Dean Broadbent, the director of the WGI Scholastic World Class Gold Medalist Flanagan High School Winter Guard , who shared his personal coaching philosophy along with all the “secrets” of this world-renowned program’s structure and training program.