What was once a military dress parade is now a worldwide competition, and the Raiders claimed the top prize five consecutive times in the 1990s and then again in 2003.

"It's overwhelming," San Jose Raiders Color Guard Director Tom Andrews says. "They do splits and leaps and throw sabers at the ceiling. The crowd eats it up."

This adrenaline rush doesn't just excite the crowd—it also excites the performers, Andrews says. It's the reason he's been involved with the event for more than 30 years and why his daughter and other youth are passionate about the pageantry.

Yadira Salinas, 25, played the lead role in the 2003 Raiders' elite World Guard production of Frida.

"It was such an honor," Salinas says.

For the costumes, all the girls drew unibrows on their faces with makeup and wore flowers in their hair like the Mexican artist Frida Kahlo.

Salinas had marched with her high school's color guard for two years and with the Raiders for eight years, and was the Guard Captain. After winning an international title, she decided she could move on, but not completely.

She now teaches the Raiders' Open Guard, a level below the World Guard.

Whether they follow in the footsteps of a family member or discover color guard in high school, youths on the San Jose Raiders remain committed.

Salinas says the World Guard, which mainly consists of 18­25-year-olds, practices 18 ¹/2 hours a week.

The commitment requires the teens to make choices, Salinas says. Often those choices include long hours practicing for competition.

Salinas says the first time her friends saw her perform, "they were expecting a teeny-bopper show" because they had never seen world-class dancing and flag, saber and rifle maneuvering.

"To them, color guard is halftime at a football game," Salinas says. "They don't realize how much effort and energy it takes."

Team member 21-year-old Heidi Trixner agrees.

"Nobody knows what it's about," she says. "It's an unknown world."

She discovered color guard after high school and joined the Raiders this year.

"I love it," she says. "People are moving right in your face. It's addictive."

John Aguiar, 21, adds that many people choose color guard for the "sheer performance" experience. Aguiar, who was also part of the 2003 World Champion World Guard team, says he was not surprised when the team won because they were ahead throughout the season and the performers were part of a veteran squad.

He is also an alumnus who wanted to keep doing what he loved through instructing. "I love practicing, spinning and dancing," he says. "It never gets old."

Twelve-year-old Paisley Parker joined the Open Guard and competed for the first time on Jan. 24 at Leigh High School.

"It's unbelievable," she says. "You see people's faces in the audience and you're making them happy by performance."

R.J. Sanjose says he's marched in color guard for eight years because he loves to dance and likes the "staff's excellence in teaching."

Like many others on the Raiders, 21-year-old Sanjose says the team's become a close community.

Salinas says the other Raiders members have been her family away from home since she moved from Hollister after graduating from high school to be closer to color guard rehearsals and attend San José State University.

Andrews says he wants to create a family atmosphere and pairs the younger performers with older ones so they have a "big brother or sister" on the team.

And many of the Raiders members are second generation, with either a parent, aunt or uncle who participated.

Gina Duarte, a Campbell resident, performed with the San Jose Raiders in the late 1980s and then stopped to start a family. She has been passing her legacy of color-guard experience on to her daughter and others by teaching for the past three years.

Now she watches her 9-year-old daughter, Ashley, enjoy the camaraderie and travel opportunities that she had as a teenager.

At first, Duarte debated teaching a class with her daughter, but says after three years she and her daughter have become adjusted to the double roles.

Andrews' history with the Raiders goes back even further than Duarte's. When he joined the organization in 1970, it was the Golden Eagles Drum and Bugle Corps.

His two older brothers and sister marched in a drum and bugle corps in upstate New York before he was old enough to join, he says.

"It was kids in the community getting together and learning how to play horns and a drum," he says.

He adds that the color guard got its start on the East Coast during the 1950s, because harsh winters forced marching band and other extracurricular activities indoors.

Later, when Andrews moved to California, he followed in his siblings' footsteps by joining several drum and bugle corps. He marched in the Golden Eagles, which became the Campbell Knight Raiders and then became the San Jose Raiders. He joined the Santa Clara Vanguard, which won the World Championships.

"My brothers were jealous because they had been in a small, little drum corps that had never won," he laughs.

The family pride and sense of legacy is as strong a force today as it was in his childhood, as he watches his daughter participate.

"I loved the activity and I'm reliving it through my daughter," Andrews says. "It's having friends and a place to go."

Although the motivations and rewards of the activity are the same, the style and technique of color-guard performances has changed over the decades.

"It was very militaristic and procedural," he says, explaining the approach used in during the 1950s and 1970s.

At that time, color-guard competitions were judged at the drum and bugle corps championship or at national contests held by the American Legion or Veterans of Foreign Wars.

In 1976, nationally known color-guard director Stanley Knaub brought his color guard, the Seattle Imperials, to perform with ballet shoes instead of boots, blending dance into the routine for the first time.

"People freaked; it changed the act," Andrews says, adding that color guards across the country soon adopted the element.

"Now we can spin the saber any way, even touch the blade," he says. "It opened it up artistically."

After dance was added, the activity quickly grew in popularity, and a symposium of color-guard directors met to standardize the rules and judging system in 1977. As color guards evolved, so did the San Jose Raiders. They went through name changes, moves and a transition from a drum and bugle corps to a color guard.

In 1979, the team moved to its 1525 Almaden Road site. The space at the new location enabled them to rehearse and also step up weekly Bingo games as team fundraisers.

"We were the first pageantry organization to do Bingo fundraising," Andrews says.

As director, Andrews ensured that the organization had the accounting straightened out after years of fiscal mismanagement, tried to keep dues low and hired more instructors.

The organization coaches three different levels for Winter Guard: A Guard for 7­12-year-olds, Open Guard for 12­18-year-olds and World Guard for guard members 18 years old and older who compete at the World Championships.

The Raiders also offer a noncompetitive summer program for children who want to learn saber, flag and rifle routines.

The San Jose Raiders World Guard began its rise to the top in 1987, when the team first qualified for the World Championship. They inched up to sixth and fourth place during the next two years.

After its fifth world champion in 1994, the San Jose Raiders' financing declined by 300 percent, Andrews says. He attributes the revenue drop to the downturn in the economy and smaller numbers of Bingo players. This decline in funding caused the team to employ fewer instructors and have fewer practices. The result was a disappointing nine years, until the team regained its international acclaim in 2003.

"The intensity of the World Championship is hard to describe," Andrews says, adding that the competition in Dayton, Ohio, is attended by 30,000 people and teams from places like the Netherlands, United Kingdom, and Japan.

The final performance is the culmination of eight months of practice and 20 competitions.

Andrews, who has been the director since 1980, says he wants the organization to retain "the mom and pop" feel from the family-based support, but he's also committed to bringing in people who will provide a competitive edge.

One of those people is dance instructor and choreographer and Campbell resident Carol Abohatab, who has taught all over the country. She currently teaches at West Valley Community College and a high school in Morgan Hill.

In her third year of teaching the Raiders, Abohatab says her choreography is a "fusion" of modern, jazz and ballet.

Her philosophy is people in color guard need to be trained as dancers so they can better handle the sabers, rifles and flags.

She says working with color-guard teams is rewarding because the members are highly motivated, with a competitive drive.

"They all get along and are very serious about it," she says.

Raiders alumni have also gone on to perform in larger shows.

San Jose Raiders Board President Sue Johnson's daughter Stacy left the Raiders in 1996. Stacy is currently on the road with the Broadway show Blast! about a drum, bugle and flag ensemble.

Now the team has another challenge: to find a new home because its Almaden Road location has been sold. The Raiders hope to find a bigger and better place before they have to vacate their present facility. For Andrews a smooth move is paramount because, as he says, "These kids have performance blood in them."

For more information about the San Jose Raiders Color Guard, visit http://www.sjraiders.com.