Founders Story/ Alumni

The Idea By: Joslyn Hagener

In 2017, my sophomore year, I transferred to the University of Iowa from the University of Northern Iowa. One of the hardest parts about the transition was not having a color guard to perform with as I did at UNI. I had always entertained the idea of starting a color guard club at Iowa, but it wasn’t until I was enrolled in an Art Ambassador course that I became serious about the idea. The course required me to create something with a positive impact for the arts department and or the University of Iowa. This motivated me to start the process of creating the Color Guard Club. I started reaching out to other clubs like Ballet Club and Dance Club for help. I started filling out all the paperwork and knew I needed to find someone as excited about this idea as I was, to help me bring my vison to life. I found exactly that! Haley Burton was the answer and helped me co-found the new club.

When I transferred to Iowa I didn’t really know anyone, so I had dinner with my neighbors on my floor in Hillcrest. Haley was one of those neighbors and we bonded over color guard. That was the only conversation we had had until I found her on Instagram a year later and DM’d her to see if she would be interested in helping me start the UI Color Guard Club. “HECK YES!” was her reply. From there we hit the ground running. I had already created the constitution and filled out most of the required paperwork, but it was a long process and there was much more to be done. Haley and I had to go to many meetings and continued to fill out paperwork while discussing ideas on how we’d like the club to look. We knew that we needed more help so we sent out a mass email to host our first info meeting in April 2019.

The Start of the Color Guard Club

On April 29, we prepared for our first meeting, waiting to see if anyone would even show. We couldn’t contain our excitement when over 35 people came to the first meeting. Seeing the excitement of potential members made all the work to start a club worth it. After this meeting, we sent out a link to apply for our executive board. Over the summer we created our executive board consisting of Joslyn Hagener - President, Haley Burton - Vice President, Sarah Paguia - Treasurer, Steph Tarchala - Performance Chair, Emma Reyerson & Jenna Howard - Event Coordinators, and Katie Myers as our Social Media Chair. This amazing team got things rolling right away in the fall of 2019. We had our first booth at the Student Org Fair and got over 100 emails between this and our info sessions. In our first year as a club, we had around 20-30 members participate. We performed in the homecoming parade and our competition team went to two competitions. Our show was called After Hours and our music came from the main titles of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. We were going to have a home performance in April, but were unable to due to the COVID 19 pandemic. It was a great first year as a club! COVID has made year two challenging, but we hope that those who come after us, continue to envision and grow the Color Guard Club into all that it can be.

Special thanks to our founding members that made this club possible! I also want to give a huge thank you specifically to this exec board. Many of you put in lots of extra hours to make everything possible. We couldn’t have started this without you! Thanks!

The Future

Amidst all of the complications, we have big plans for the future of the Color Guard Club. We hope that the club continues to grow and provide a fun creative sport for all future Hawkeyes who join. One of our goals for the future is to see this club perform at Iowa basketball games and other UI and area events. We also hope to see our UI Color Guard Club fight song performed on the Kinnick field someday! A bright array of black and gold synchronized flags twirling and spinning would add life and excitement to the game day experience for all Hawkeye fans! We wish the best of luck to future members of this club and can’t wait to see how you will expand and improve the Color Guard Club!