Beneath the Friday night lights, students and parents travel from the stands to the concessions during the football game’s halftime, eager to not miss a moment of the action. But the attendants often miss the electrifying on-field performance of junior color guard member Race Mashburn.
Mashburn has rocked the marching band show with his rifle and saber solos for the past two years. His interest in color guard started freshman year in 2020, during the COVID-19 lockdown.
He was introduced to color guard through TikTok. Initially, he was intimidated to join because the structure of the after-school activity was completely different from what he imagined.
“I thought it looked really cool and, at first, I was confused because I thought it was a military thing with the rifles,” Mashburn said.
This is his third season of color guard. Last year, during the Villainous show, he had the unexpected opportunity to do the saber solo, as the character Sweeney Todd from The Demon Barber Of Fleet Street. A saber solo is when a color guard member performs a dance with a plastic saber, which involves tons of saber twirling and throwing.
“On audition day for solos, I wasn’t going to try out for the saber one because I wanted to do the rifle solo, so I didn’t prepare for it. I learned the choreo right before I auditioned for it,” Mashburn said. “I got the part because Celeste, our old coach, knew I would work on the choreo at home and do extra practice.”
Olivia Brown is the new head coach for the color guard after their previous coach left the program. She has been a big supporter of Mashburn throughout his color guard career.
“As a person, Mashburn is amazing,” Brown said. “He’s always smiling and having a good time.”
This year Mashburn has taken on more responsibilities during the marching band’s show, “What is Up. ” He has another solo, but his feelings about performing have changed with growth as a performer.
“At the beginning of last season, I’d get anxious to perform the solo, but as the year went on I stopped getting anxious for it and was more excited to perform the solo,” Mashburn said.
Brown enjoys seeing the major improvement and progression Mashburn’s solos demonstrate. Her goal as a coach is to make members comfortable and confident in their skills.
“I try to record him and get the band directors to say how good he’s doing so he can see that not just his coach sees how good his performance is, when he gets past anxiety, he performs like no other,” Brown said.
Race works through adversity as a transgender color guard member when the band goes to competitions.
“It was hard at first when I came out because color guard is perceived as a sport for girls even though it’s just dance and that’s inclusive to everyone,” Mashburn said. “Then it can be hard too because with hair, makeup and costumes, it’s [colorguard] always leaned more feminine and it gets hard sometimes because people will automatically assume that every member of the guard is a girl.”
Though Mashburn had adversity with people assuming his gender at competitions, he has friends within the colorguard group that helped support him. Senior Rory Thompson helped Mashburn through adversity.
“After competitions on the bus he would sometimes cry and I would be there and reassure him,” Thompson said.
Thompson sees a lot of herself in Mashburn and is the reason she is such a big supporter of him and his journey.
“I didn’t want him to make the same mistakes I made, especially freshman year, I wanted to help guide him,” Thompson said.
When Mashburn was transitioning he had a hard time being accepted, but was able to overcome that by being surrounded by the color guard and band.
“All my friends support me, the band, theater and choir are with me. At first I did have some people who I had problems with but it’s gotten a lot better now that I am farther in my transition and people see me as a guy,” Mashburn said. “I have honestly been supported a ton by the community.”
