Creston trio follow in band director’s footsteps

When facing their senior year of high school, three students decided they weren’t ready to be done with their passion for color guard.

In July, Panthers Saige Johnston, Ami Patel and Trinity Woody traveled to Texas for Phantom Regiment Academy - a training camp before the November auditions.

Phantom Regiment has been the most prominent drum corps in the Rockford area since its inception in 1956. The competitive drum corps began as Rockford Rangers with an all-girl color guard to be called the Rangerettes, but members didn’t feel “Rangers” was an appropriate name for their corps.

Some of the members had been listening to some Stetson D. Richmond records, and were impressed with a tune the Syracuse Brigadiers had played titled “The Phantom Regiment.” Thus, before the corps had made any public appearances, the corps name had been changed to the Phantom Regiment and the all-girl color guard was called the Phantomettes.

Creston band director, Michael Peters, is no stranger to the Phantom Regiment, as he participated in the corps in the 1980s. Peters said these are his first students to audition for his alma mater.

“We got into it from hearing that our band director did it,” Johnston said. “We started looking at different drum corps and trying to pick our favorite. Phantom was our favorite out of all the drum corps.”

The journey toward becoming a part of the Phantom color guard started with a training camp in Texas designed for experienced and aspiring performers from all high school and college levels.

The purpose of the color guard is to interpret the music the marching band or drum and bugle corps is playing via the synchronized work of flags, sabres, rifles, the air blade and through dance.

“We all three realized it was a lot of dance and technique more than advanced spinning,” Patel said. “That was the hardest part was that dance was what they mainly look at. It was how you move your body while you’re spinning, not just how you’re spinning.”

The color guard selects between 30 and 50 members to make the cut each year, and everyone has to audition - even veterans of the corps. Since the camp, the girls have continued to practice with their coaches here in Iowa.

“It’s going to be a challenge, but we all three want to conquer it,” Johnston said. “It’s kind of hard when we have to learn our own stuff. It’s our old technique intertwined with the new stuff to create something different.”

Should they make the team in November, the girls will prepare for a whirlwind summer traveling around the country to perform.

“If we do make it in, we leave toward the end of May. We move in the dorms and start learning drill and choreography with the corps,” Woody said. “We would start traveling to different schools in Illinois while we get the shows together. Then we compete across America.”

This year’s program is wrapping up now with the Drum Corps International (DCI) world championships happening Thursday through Saturday in Indianapolis.

“It’s awesome,” Peters said. “I’m glad they’re doing my alma mater. These friends of mine that I marched with when I was in the guard, they saw my post and were all excited for me. The girl who was actually the guard captain in the early 90s reached out to me to let her know if they need any help. It’s really cool.”

On tour, the corps goes on a bus and travels from high school to high school where they make their home on gym floors.

“We will work really hard,” Patel said. “We practice the technique, the dance moves and everything we used in the training camp.”