SHERBURNE – A Preview of Champions color guard competition kicks off at 5 p.m. Saturday at the Sherburne-Earlville High School gym with 11 teams participating, including the joint Oxford-Norwich Ensemble, Union-Endicott, and Laurens Jaguars, and color guards from as far away as Pulaski.

An intermission will be held midway through the competition with concessions available in the high school cafeteria and an awards ceremony is scheduled for later Saturday night, at 8.

Sherburne-Earlville Winter Color Guard was established 48 years ago and is one of the founding groups of the Mid-York Color Guard Circuit, which currently boasts a membership of more than 40 different guards in the Central New York region. The Sherburne-Earlville program is one of two color guards still active in Chenango County, the only other being the Oxford-Norwich Ensemble. The Sherburne-Earlville Winter Color Guard is currently in the process of rebuilding its program after the majority of its members graduated last year, so it is currently classified as a scholastic mid-level beginner group. At the moment the program has 11 members, four of whom are returning veterans while seven are newly inaugurated sixth graders.

“It really is a new beginning for us,” said S-E Color Guard instructor Becky Jantzen.

Jantzen is a veteran of Hamilton Central School District’s Color Guard, and after graduating from college, she returned to lead the Hamilton guard as an instructor for three years. In 2001, Jantzen began instructing Sherburne-Earlville’s program.