The FHN Winter Guard abruptly concluded its competitive season last week after head coach Luke Christisen unexpectedly resigned from his position. Though there are four competitions left on the schedule, the rest of the season will not continue according to the schedule.

“Everyone is really upset, especially the seniors,” JV Captain Josie Pingel said. “We’re all just in shock because we didn’t think that this was going to happen.”

This was the first Winter Guard season that featured both a varsity and a junior varsity, with varsity’s show titled, “Porcelain” and junior varsity’s, “The First Snow.” Christisen’s resignation occurred before the completion of the choreography of each show. 

“Creating a show is always a process, and we were still in the middle of that process when this all happened,” Varsity Captain Esther Lin said. “I do wish we could have performed the show at least once for our friends and family before everything got canceled.”

Christisen had previously coached both Winter Guard and Color Guard for two and a half years at North. New coaches are being sought out for next season, but there is currently no plan to hire a coach for the remainder of the 25-26 Winter Guard season. 

“We probably won’t have this figured out until April, but we will practice and put some performances together,” Band Director Ryan Curtis said. 

Christisen’s official reason for resignation is due to highly personal reasons, but some guard members speculate that it was the result of stress and conflict between both guard members and coaches.

“I personally think that our coach took on too much,” Pingel said. “He had multiple groups that he was coaching and got overwhelmed, and we were the first that he had to say goodbye to.”