L’pool High School JV Color Guard coach gets marriage proposal during home show
By Bridget Whitfield
Contributing Writer
Family members and students lined each side of the Liverpool High School gymnasium cheering and holding their breath in anticipation as they watched flags flail in the air at the Sights and Sounds of Winter Guard show on Saturday evening.
The Liverpool High School Varsity, Junior Varsity and Cadet Winter Guards each performed intricate and artistic displays of flag twirling combined with difficult gymnastic stunts and dance moves. With themes like the bean stalk with lush green and brown nature backgrounds to parachuting guards that hung from large boxes and twirled as if they were more than 1,000 feet in the air, each group put on a show that they clearly put their heart in souls into performing.
But the coaches, who took an idea and created productions that left the crowd silent and captivated, were the ones that stood the proudest watching their teams perform. This was a special night for them to be able to share with the community the passion for the color guard they taught their students, but out of all of the coaches, Liverpool’s Junior Varsity coach Courtney Clark smiled the brightest.
When all of the performances finished, they brought out each team one by one for the award ceremony. As everyone stood with anxiousness waiting to hear where they placed, the announcer called all of the junior varsity coaches to the center of the court.
They all stood at the center looking at each other in curiosity, wondering what they were being called down for. The group of coaches backed away from Clark as Justin Myhill, her boyfriend, walked up to the jaw-dropped and flushed Clark with a microphone and a mission.
Myhill walked up to her, addressed the crowd, and said, “You’re my dream girl, and I really wanted you to know that I want to spend the rest of my life with you.”
She covered her mouth with her hands as her eyes welled up with tears, and when Myhill went to get down on one knee, she quickly nodded her head and grabbed his hands to pull him up and in for a tight hug.
The crowd roared and students jumped up and screamed in joy for their coach’s engagement. She embraced his face as they kissed and the engagement ring gleamed in the gymnasium’s game lights. They held hands and turned to the crowd as they clapped and cheered as if to thank them for this moment, and just like that, the two stole the show — and all of the jitters — from the worried contestants.
Although Myhill was nervous — he said he had butterflies in his stomach throughout the entire day — he was happy to have been able to propose at an event that means the world to his new fiancée.
“It was pretty crazy. It was a once in a lifetime thing,” Myhill said. “It’s her passion, the color guard world, so I figured it was one of the best options for me to do it, and in front of all her friends and family.”
As if Clark wasn’t already having a night she’d remember for the rest of her life, her Liverpool Junior Varsity team won first place in their class with a score of 71.78.
