One boy has paved the way for LZ’s increasing number of co-ed competitive sports by going into his first season on the winter Color Guard team.

Before junior Adrian Campos joined the team for the 2015-2016 season, a boy had never been on LZ Color Guard, despite its technical classification as a co-ed team.

“Having [Campos] with us allows us to be more daring and try more things like lifts with the girls. I’m really glad that we were able to add more to our routine,” Leigh Saegebrecht, Color Guard co-coach, said.  “If you look at color guard on the college level as well as the professional level, there are so many male guards who can do such amazing things.”

Gender stereotypes, including common beliefs of some sports and activities being restricted to people of only one gender are what keeps girls and boys from participating in activities such as Color Guard together.

“In middle school I had interest in Color Guard, but all of my friends told me that it was just for girls. Then in high school I had plenty of friends that were already in Color Guard and they told me how much fun it was,” Campos said. “Before joining, I kind of just assumed that Color Guard was a gender-based sport, kind of like most dance or girls’ cheerleading.”

However, after he learned that Color Guard was a co-ed sport, Campos put his previous assumptions about it aside and went to multiple clinics to prepare him to try out for a spot on what he knew would be a female dominated team.

“[Try-outs] were a little bit rough because we had to go to a couple of clinics beforehand and they had people teaching us what the moves were and all of the techniques. Because the coaches were used to it being mainly a girl’s’ sport, they kept saying things like ‘come on girls, let’s try it again,’” Campos said. “It was a little bit intimidating. I felt like they maybe didn’t want me to join.”

Despite his initial hesitation to try out, both Campos and his coaches are glad that he was able to push past gender stereotypes for reasons beyond making Color Guard co-ed for the first time in Lake Zurich.

“It’s not just about having a guy on the team; it’s specifically having Adrian on our team. He’s low drama and has a good sense of humor,” Libby Reimann, Color Guard co-coach, said. “I think he’s helped everyone get along a lot better. I can’t say that any boy would fit into the team, but Adrian has definitely been a very positive addition to the team.