Yellow and black flags were twirled and tossed as the Dartmouth High School Unified Color Guard “Without Limits,” danced to “Best Day of My Life” by American Authors.

Started this year, the school’s unified color guard brings together current and former members of the color guard with special education students.

The groups was led by recent graduate Aimee Correia, and has practiced two days a week for five weeks during the summer. Each session lasted an hour.

“[Aimee] had the idea of wanting to do this,” said Mike Capello, an adaptive physical education teacher. “Hopefully, it will spark an interest.”

“We have done something similar in the past,” said Capello. “Dartmouth High School has had a unified track and field team, flag football team and a unified basketball team.”

Correia, who has been a Girl Scout for 13 years, needed to lead a project that would “link the community together” in order to received the Gold Award, the highest award one can earn as a Girl Scout.

Correia saw a group similar to the unified color guard when the team went to Dayton, Ohio, during her sophomore year for the Winter Guard International Finals. She’s wanted to start a program since then.

“The director of the color guard program wants to keep this going,” said Correia. “This is going to continue.”

Correia will attend Simmons University in the fall to major in psychology with a focus in special education. Since this is the pilot year for the program, she hopes that it will continue.

“Color guard has been a big part of my life,” said 2015 graduate Brittany Lawrence. “I couldn’t picture doing anything else.”

The group agrees: the members are all one big family that has a ton of fun.

“Aimee put together such a nice program with good intentions,” said senior Morgan Pimentel. “We all hope the program continues because color guard is such a huge part of everyone’s life.”

Correia thanked Mr. Capello, her family and her friends for all of their support and help, as well as a sponsor that made T-shirts for the performance.

“I liked the dancing and the flags the best,” said unified color guard member Roland Abi Ramia. “I would definitely do it again.”