When Joel Montes founded the ICT Winds last year he had one goal: to elevate the Kansas marching arts scene. In their debut season, the group had 10 members and won their class at a regional competition. This year, they’ve almost doubled in size to 17 members, including four returning performers, and they hope to advance to the finals at the World Championships in Dayton, Ohio.

“We are going to put Kansas on the map,” Montes said.

What are the marching arts?

Montes, who grew up in both Texas and Nebraska and now teaches band in Buhler, Kansas, deeply loves the marching arts. In the fall, this looks like what most readers will likely imagine when they think of a marching band: musicians in uniform marching in formation, often during halftimes at football games. Students who want more marching band can audition to play in any of the highly competitive organizations that make up Drum Corps International, which tour throughout the summer. 

DCI and competitive high school marching band bring together multiple components of the arts: music, choreography, costumes, storytelling. Marching requires a great deal of athleticism, and in many ways it’s the ultimate team sport. For many students, the feeling of coming together on the field to tell a story through music and movement is addictive. People who love marching band love marching band. 

So what do these kids do in the winter, when there are no football games and it’s too cold to march outside? Enter Winter Guard International. Winter guard is the catch-all term for three kinds of groups that perform indoors: color guard, percussion (indoor drum line), and winds.

Traditional color guards consist of members who dance, spin and toss flags and prop rifles, and tell a story through motion choreographed to a soundtrack. Percussion and wind groups play their instruments while marching, but often with a little more choreography and visual elements than you’d see in traditional outdoor marching band. They often use a background soundtrack as well, but most of what you hear is performed live. Like marching band, winter guard is athletic and competitive; WGI’s slogan is the “sport of the arts.” 

Winter guard provides another benefit to small schools: performing in a smaller venue. In Kansas, many schools don't have enough students to field a large marching band that can perform competitively, so winter guard offers interested students an opportunity to perform at a higher level in a smaller group. 

Montes had been teaching in Buhler and working with other marching groups in the area for a few years when he began wondering about creating a new performance opportunity for his most motivated students. WGI categorizes indoor groups as either scholastic (in which all members come from the same school) or independent (in which members from multiple schools come together to perform), and Montes thought an independent winds group would be the right fit for south central Kansas. It’s the first group of its kind in the state.

Within each categorization are different classes: ICT Winds performs as an “A class,” which allows them to combine different age ranges of performers. This year’s members come from Buhler High School, Derby Middle School, Goddard High School, and Maize South High School. 

ICT Winds is now in their second season. Their show this year is called “Afterburner” and celebrates daring aviators, a fitting topic for a group based in the Wichita area. Their music, arranged by staff member Alex Thode, includes excerpts from “Danger Zone” by Kenny Loggins, “Burning Heat” by Motoaki Furukawa, “Hold My Hand” by Lady Gaga, and “Turbo Scramjet” by Will Pitts.

At an ICT Winds show, you’ll see a theatrical marching performance that takes you on a whirlwind journey in under five minutes. The musicians begin without their instruments, performing choreography before running to pick up their instruments. They perform to an accompanying soundtrack created by the sound designer on staff, Tim Mitchell, but the aural focus is always the artistry of the young players. Their fiery enthusiasm is evident in every note. They’ve competed twice this season, with two more shows to go before the world championships. 

Creating the competition circuit

A key part of the winter guard experience is competition. Performing for scores is vital not just to motivation but also for improvement. But as Montes discovered when he began teaching in Kansas, there aren’t many opportunities for guards to compete without traveling six hours to Dallas, Omaha, or even further afield. The solution? SIPAA, the Sunflower Indoor Performing Arts Association, the first circuit for Kansas indoor guard, percussion, and winds. 

Debra Funke participated in color guard as a teen in Goddard, Kansas, performing with ICT Independent, a group that still exists today. When Montes started ICT Winds, Funke saw an immediate opportunity to create a space for both independent and scholastic groups to compete against one another locally, thus lowering the financial barrier to entry for many students by reducing travel expenses. 

“For the last ten years at Goddard, I’ve had students asking to do winter guard here,” Funke explained. “Can we do it here so we don’t have to travel as much?” Montes made a similar point: “ICT Winds has the potential to do really well, but financially it is not sustainable to travel to get good feedback.”

Funke, Montes, and a few other educators in the area realized they had enough connections to local groups to get a new circuit off the ground. Current groups include winter guards from Goddard Middle School, Goddard High School, and Derby High School, as well as two independent winter guards: ICT Independent, which has existed in some form since the 1990s, and Elegante Independent, which is affiliated with Emporia State.

SIPAA’s goal is to “provide young performers with a chance to display their unique skills in regulated competitions with their peers,” according to its website. Funke told me SIPAA is the platform upon which she can help her students grow beyond what she herself can offer them. Students competing at SIPAA get to see other groups perform, and they receive scores and feedback from judges (two per contest: some well-known names in the marching arts, plus others who are local educators). 

Winter guard is inherently community-building. Like students who participate in theater, sports, or choir, guard members bond quickly with one another because they share a common goal. The small size of winter guards and intense time commitment means these students spend a great deal of time together. The SIPAA circuit allows the students to get to know members from other guards; they compete against each other, but they also learn from and support one another.

“It’s just awesome to me to give them that positive environment,” Funke said. “They build up each other’s confidence. You can be good by yourself, but you can be good as part of a team, too.” For younger students, like those in Funke’s Goddard Middle School Winter Guard, seeing the more advanced groups perform is exciting because they get to see what’s possible.

One of Montes’ hopes for ICT Winds is to inspire the next generation of music educators. “We're hoping that the members take that knowledge back to their home programs. We're trying to raise the bar in Kansas.”

Funke and her colleagues have similar hopes for SIPAA: In addition to providing a competitive base for local groups, they hope the circuit will encourage more schools to create their own color guard and indoor wind groups. “If we build the circuit, the scholastic groups will come,” Funke explained.

Attending a show

There is something quite ephemeral about winter guard. The shows are often only three to five minutes long for beginning groups. Even the most advanced groups that perform at the WGI World Championships usually only perform from four to seven and a half minutes. But a talented guard can pack a lot into a short show.

Like Montes, I grew up in Texas, where there are multiple scholastic winter guard circuits and a very high level of performance. Until I went to a SIPAA contest at Goddard High School on March 14, I hadn't seen a winter guard show in almost 20 years, and I wasn’t sure what to expect — especially from ICT Winds, which, as a wind player myself, I was most interested to hear. 

I was blown away. These young musicians can really play, but what stuck with me is the way their energy and enthusiasm permeated every note and every step. A highlight was a flute solo in the middle of the show: The playing was beautiful, and I love that in winter guard it is not unusual to hear someone perform a gorgeous lyrical solo before they dance away at the end. The full group plays with focused cohesion, which is impressive for a guard in its second season. 

“This whole year feels like a celebration of growth,” Montes said. “The kids are super hungry, and they’re pushing the staff to teach them better.” 

As the end of the winter guard season nears, ICT Winds are preparing to attend the WGI World Championships in Dayton, Ohio. 

Montes believes opportunities like this will help Kansas musicians grow — and show their stuff in front of national and international audiences. With the organizational infrastructure SIPAA provides, ICT Winds can assemble the most focused and enthusiastic students in the area and give them a concrete goal to work toward. 

“ICT Winds is going to be a group people are going to know,” Montes said.

I can’t wait to see where they go.

The Details

SIPAA Championships
1-3 p.m. Saturday, April 4, at Derby High School, 920 Rock Road in Derby

Doors open at 12:15 p.m., and the event begins at 1 p.m. This will be the final show of SIPAA's inaugural season.

Admission is $10 for adults, $8 for students, military (with ID), and seniors 65 and older. Admission is free for children under 5.

Kate Storhoff is a musicologist whose research focuses on contemporary American composers. Before moving to Wichita, she managed an independent bookstore and taught at Wake Forest University and the University of North Carolina School of the Arts. She plays several instruments; as a clarinet player growing up in Texas, she marched competitively for four years.

Support Kansas arts writing

The SHOUT is a Wichita-based independent newsroom focused on artists living and working in Kansas. We're partly supported by the generosity of our readers, and every dollar we receive goes directly into the pocket of a contributing writer, editor, or photographer. Click here to support our work with a tax-deductible donation.