By BRITTNEY DEVOE
Contributing Writer
Spinning sabers, flying flags, energetic fifth and sixth graders, are just another day in the life of Sarah Abelson. As a color guard coach at Shenendehowa, Abelson, a junior psychology major at The College of Saint Rose, is able to adjust to her school and work schedule just fine.
A full-time student, Abelson, 20, balances both by planning out when her assignments are due for classes. Since it’s challenging to organize her busy schedule, it takes away the time she would get together with her friends or work on homework. But it’s all worth it in Abelson’s opinion.
Abelson’s partnership with the Shenendehowa color program began long before she became a coach two years ago. Abelson started the program in 6th grade and ended in her senior year of high school. She lives in Clifton Park and still loves the program; she decided she would stay as a coach.
“Trying to explain color guard is like trying to explain chemistry to an English professor,” said Abelson, who quoted the Director of the color guard program, Scott Snell. In simpler terms, it could be best described as a routine set to music with flags, rifles, and sabers mixed with dance.
First Abelson volunteered as a coach and one year later she took a paying job. The guard policy requires that a student has “to be away from the program for a year in order to come back and be a coach and be a paid staff member,” Abelson said. So when the team needed extra help in the elementary regional winter season, Abelson was asked to join.
Her schedule includes two shifts, Thursday night and every other Saturday. She also works at competitions; this year there will be six. Making a minimal amount of money, $150 per season, doesn’t affect Abelson.
“Honestly what I work for is to have fun with the kids and have new experiences and have experiences with younger kids,” says Abelson.
Working with kids fits with her academic career in school psychology. It’s the real reason Abelson wants to do this job.
“I love working with the kids, they’re the ones who make me smile every week,” said Abelson. With 19 kids in the guard Abelson coaches, it would seem that keeping their attention would be difficult, luckily for Abelson, to her that’s the difficult aspect about the job.
The Acadia cafeteria, on the district campus, holds color guard practices where the kids walk in talking about school and are then lined up by the cash registers. A tarp is used to practice on, the best way to describe it “is what they use to make billboards,” Abelson said.
Abelson has specialties in flag and dance; she has spun saber before as well as briefly taught rifle. It seems like a difficult task especially then learning a routine, but the kids learned this year’s routine in about 12 weeks.
Typically color guards perform with marching bands, but at Shenendehowa there is no marching band, so color guard becomes its own act. Color guard performs at football games during the fall season. During this season everyone involved in the color guard program participates, becoming one huge guard.
Winter guard season is the competition season. Abelson and the other five coaches focus on the concept for the routine and get the show prepared, as well as training the guard to have the proper skills to be able to put a show together. From there it is cleaning up the routine and continuing with the rest of the season. It seems never ending, but that’s just fine with Abelson.
If she will ever leave the program, that seems out of the question. “Color guard is a very big family and once you join color guard as a member or a staff person you love it so much that you don’t want to leave,” Abelson said. “It’s its own separate family so it’s very hard to leave. But I wouldn’t choose to leave either.”
