Colorguard: Stereotypes Brought to Light - Comments

Absolutly love this artical! I'm in guard and it really doesnt get any better than when you have an entire team that you feel is your family. Me and my girls are super close and we all share a mutual love of the sport so yeah...i absolutely adore the fact that you wrote this!

LOL the brass boyfriend thing fits my guard captain perfectly. Anyway another thing that you didn't touch on guard girls are often thought of as stupid, the guard I'm part of is small only five members and out of them two (including me) are high ranking honor students and one is an ROTC leader.

i was in color-guard in high school. i loved it. the experience was like no other. i am so glad someone finally said something about it.

Oh my gosh I'm so glad people enjoyed my article. And for people who didn't understand some of the stereotypes, they're the most common ones. It doesn't mean that they apply to every school, they're just the ones I've witnessed.

I'm in color guard at my high school in Oregon. I love it so much. Our last game is actually this coming Friday and its senior night for me. I just think of color guard as a group of girls who come together to share an activity that they all enjoy. I consider my guard girls to be my family. Color guard should NEVER be stereotyped. Reject cheerleaders? For my football team's record, color guard and band is the real reason people go to the game.
Loved reading this article. It caught my attention(:

I'm in color guard! In North Carolina, actually. Our Jamboree was on Thursday, and I've gotta say, the color guards in my county are so talented and amazing. Our guard did have a feud with the cheerleaders because of something that happened at an away game, but that ended after like three days. I never thought about guard members being rejected cheerleaders. Most of our guard is in dance, so we're a hybrid of dancers and guard girls. And what's weird about the weight stereotype is that our alumni guard was pretty big, but half of our guard this year is super skinny.

I was in Color Guard all four years of high school, in a small town in rural Ohio. For being a smaller town our high school was fairly large (graduating classes of around 250) and our Marching band including guard consisted of close to 200 students. The four year in Color Guard were the most fun I have ever had and also the most challenging.

It taught me many things, most importantly leadership. Being a squad leader my junior and senior year also taught me patience when it came to the girls who had more difficulty picking up the routines. I was friends with every stereotype in school, jock, prep, FFA, the smart ones, the ditzy ones, artsy, etc. And I contribute the majority of that growth in maturity to being in the guard.

Whether is sports, guard, or any other extra-curricular activity it's just another outlet to shape our youth into adults that contribute positively to our community.

Haaaaaa! These are funny, but not to be stereotypically racial, I think this can be racially different also because the high school I went to, more than 50% of all the people going there were black/African/African American and most of the colorguards and band members were that race too and I don't think people had the same stereotypes because to be honest, none of the black/African/African American people fit those stereotypes and I don't think anyone really believed it. Plus they all seemed to get along from what I knew because a lot of the band and colorguards were my friend. But then again, my school defied almost all stereotypes.

I was an art student and a good one, and I used to be shy when I was in elementary, but I'm not snotty. And now I'm really bold so, halla at a playa.

When I first joined guard, the band would blame the guard for bad scores... Then the second year the directors realized what was going on and decided to put an end to that.

The rest of my high school career, our entire band was super close. It was fantastic.

Also our guard, drumline, and pit were super close.

I was so happy to read this article. :)

Ha ha, another stereotype would be that all men on colorguard are gay, but it was actually true for my colorguard though...

Colorguard!! My eyes literally popped out of my head when I saw this article. It is my absolute favorite thing to do. I love it so much. I feel like not a lot of people know what it really is though, which is very unfortunate because it's actually quite a difficult sport.

The cheerleader thing here confuses me a bit. My high school experience involved a color guard and a cheer squad who had no qualms with each other. It was our cheer squad and our dance team the Blue Belles that held more than a mild disdain. Those were the "cheerleader rejects". Actually the marching band and color guard got along quite well with everyone considering some of the kids on the upper tier of the social level participated in almost all the groups, I.e. color guard, marching band, chorus, orchestra. I never realized that there was tension in other schools between the guard amd the cheerleaders.

Im in guard and ive danced since i was little and i love it but at our school our guard hates the band for the most part and HATES the drumline. i never understand. but i do play saxophone too

I'm in my 3rd year in color guard, and I have hear these stereotypes all throughout the middle and high school.

I was in guard most of my high school career and absolutely loved it. I think most don't realize, at least for my color guard experience, is that it requires more strength and dance experience than most think. The biggest stereotype I had to put up with is that the color guard and drum line didn't get along. That was completely wrong for me! We went through conditioning and often times hung out with them during break. I loved guard!

I have a friend that's a boy who does color guard and claims to be the only straight guy in color guard in the state. Is that a stereotype...?

@ heyaimee
I'm not the only one who hates it when people say it isn't a sport. So glad my high school agreed it was. They even apologized for the Football team taking over our practice field one day. :)

Guard is awesome,but I'm in the Trumpet line, and let me tell ya... BRASS KICKS ASS! ;)

I'm in guard and its literally my life, but I love it, and thank you for calling it a sport! I get so pissed off when people say it isnt.

Awesome article. I was a colorguard for a little while. I fell in love with it and then I was kicked off the team because of personal issues. A stereotype I heard a lot was "Colorguards and the drum line don't get along" It's a load of bull as well. I can say I got along with the drummers really well. I sat with 3 of the 4 we had all the time on the bus. :)

I miss colorguard. I still have a ribbon around here somewhere.