Well, that went by pretty quickly, didn’t it?

The 2022 WGI Color Guard World Championships are officially in the books, and the three-year wait for a return to world championship action was more than satisfied with three action-packed days of compelling performances and intriguing competition across four venues in Ohio and Kentucky.

And after all this time, we finally have a new set of six color guard world champions. But some of them aren’t exactly new. We’ll get into that. 

Without further ado, a competitive roundup of the weekend’s color guard action: 

Right where they left off

2019 saw two groups finishing firmly atop their respective World Class divisions, with Avon HS topping the Scholastic World ranks by nearly three points, and Pride of Cincinnati earning Independent World gold by a margin of about two. 

In both classes, 2022 was a much closer race — especially on the independent side. But ultimately, it yielded the same result. 

Both Avon and Pride are “repeat” World Champions, marking the first time two World Class groups both won back-to-back titles in the same set of seasons. 

Avon, ultimately, got it done without too close of a call; although its lead was fewer than a point in both Prelims and Semifinals, Avon ended up winning in Finals by 1.450. Back in 2019, Avon became the first Scholastic World group to win two in a row since James Logan’s streak of 10 titles from 1998-2007. Avon’s 2022 win makes it just the third group ever to win three SW golds in a row. 

As for Pride, the Ohio ensemble didn’t lead the Independent World pack until Finals night. In Prelims and Semifinals, it was Diamante — which ultimately earned silver — leading the way by slim margins of 0.20 and 0.10. Pride’s back-to-back title is its second time doing so in five seasons — Pride also won two in a row in 2016 and 2017. Other than that repeat, this “repeat” is just the second in Independent World since 2000.

Sunshine State shows out 

Outside of World Class divisions, 2022 was largely the year of the Florida color guards. 

For starters, two of the top three Independent Open groups, including the division’s winner, hailed from the Sunshine State — and specifically, Tampa Bay. University of South Florida took home top marks with a score of 94.550, while third-place Tampa Independent scored 92.500. In between was Eklipse (TN), scoring 92.900. 

And then, in A class, 2022 was a Florida sweep. Both A class winners came from Florida, with FIU Gold (96.385) and Somerset Academy (97.730) leading their respective classes.

To add to the trend, though, Florida also produced four SW finalists, Independent A’s silver medalist (Pegasus Winterguard A), and Scholastic Open’s bronze medalist (Sunlake HS). 

For perspective — in the previous five WGI color guard seasons, no state has produced more than two champions in the same year. That happened most recently in 2019, when Avon HS and Fishers HS both represented Indiana as gold medalists. Florida saw two of its guards win gold medals as recently as 2018, but three is a new level of single-state success. 

Kiski runs the table

From start to finish of World Championships weekend, if there was one group that had taken a firm hold of its classification, it was Scholastic Open’s Kiski Area HS.

When all was said and done on Saturday, Kiski had a commanding lead, earning its gold medal with two points to spare. In Semifinals — which was the first time all weekend that every Scholastic Open competitor was under one roof — that lead was 1.80. 

Kiski had been putting up impressive numbers all year, so it’s resounding victory was certainly the cherry on top of a successful wall-to-wall season.