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2019 WGI Guard World Championships

Four Burning Questions For This Week's Guard World Champs

Four Burning Questions For This Week's Guard World Champs

350 Winter Guards will take the performance stage across multiple venues in this year's 2019 WGI Guard World Championships. Here's a quick rundown.

Mar 29, 2019 by Jeff Griffith
Four Burning Questions For This Week's Guard World Champs

For the next two weeks, all eyes are on Ohio.

First up under the microscope? More than 350 color guards, distributed across all six classifications.

From April 3-6, these ensembles will take the floor as they vie for top spots on the indoor activity’s biggest, brightest stage.

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When you’ve got so many unique groups converging for one event—I mean, for goodness sake, there are nearly 150 competing in Scholastic A—it’s impossible to boil it all down to simple competitive Xs and Os.

But we’re going to take a shot anyway, with four burning questions set to be answered next weekend:

INDEPENDENT WORLD: Can Pride of Cincinnati return to the top or will a sleeper steal gold?

If you take a look at WGI’s Independent World standings, two familiar faces fill the top three; the 2018 world champions, Paramount, are positioned in third, while the 2017 and 2016 world champions, Pride of Cincinnati, currently holding down the top spot.

Stuck right between them? Diamante, which has yet to finish higher than fifth at the World Class level. But have taken steps forward year after year, with last year’s sixth-place finish a new high for the Anaheim-based ensemble.

If Diamante were to cap off its rise with a gold medal, it'd be another year of a group winning that has never earned it before in WGI World Championships for Independent World.

INDEPENDENT WORLD: How high can recent World Class newcomers fly?

Bluecoats Indoor stormed onto the Independent World scene last season with a trip to finals and a 12th-place finish. Currently positioned in seventh, it’ll be interesting to see just how far the Indianapolis, IN ensemble can take its early success in year two.

CGT Dallas and CGT Denton locked down the top two spots at the (mostly) all-Texas WGI Southwest Power Regional a couple of weeks ago, and currently sit at 8th and 13th, respectively, in WGI’s IW standings. For CGT Denton, even earning a spot in finals would be quite impressive, as this is the ensemble’s first year at the World Class level after taking Open Class silver in 2018.

SCHOLASTIC WORLD: Will Avon go back-to-back?

Prior to 2018, the previous five Scholastic World titles had gone one of two ways—three went to Carmel HS (2017, 2015, 2013) and two went to Tarpon Springs HS (2016, 2014). Notice the trend there, though; no one’s repeated in quite some time.

Last year, Carmel’s crosstown rival, Avon, broke the trend, topping the SW field by nearly two full points. Based on WGI’s standings, Avon’s positioned to do so once again, currently holding a lead of 2.4 points over the next closest competitor after having posted a stunning 94.950 this weekend.

What’s interesting, though, is that based on these metrics, of the ensembles currently sitting within closest striking distance of Avon, neither has earned a World Class medal in over a decade. Since 2009, just seven schools have combined to fill the top three positions in a given year—Carmel,  Avon, Tarpon Springs, Trumbull, Flanagan, Arcadia, and James Logan.

Holding second and third positions right now are Center Grove and West Broward, with Carmel and Trumbull not far behind. Whether this holds or not is yet to be seen, but it’s certainly an indicator that we could see some shake-up in a class that’s been effectively monopolized at the top in recent memory.

INDEPENDENT OPEN: Who will be the next in a line of new champions?

Each of the last four years, a different group has won Indepenent Open. But how do we know that trend’s going to continue this year?

None of those four victors—UCF Pegasus, Interplay, AMP Winter Guard and Juxtaposition—compete in Open Class anymore. This time around, with none of last year’s medalists still competing at the IO level, the top players are newer faces.

Based on WGI’s standings, the race for a title appears to be between the four ensembles who have broken 90 points over the past two weeks. Those are George Mason University (6th in 2018), ORIGINS (5th), FIU (8th) and Paramount (7th), in that order, per the standings.

Which one of these groups emerge from the pack is yet to be seen, but 2019 should be no exception to the rule that Independent Open continues to be one of the more competitive classifications in WGI color guard.