Colorguard/Winterguard

Colorguard - Possibly the sport with the most epic win potential of them all. It is love.

You'll see us on the football field during that season. We'll be the awesome people with the huge smiles, the painted faces, and, oh yeah, those giant six-foot poles. Or a rifle. Or a sabre. Or a swing flag. Or a prop. Or those new (flipping sweet!) air rifles. Or dancing... You get the point, we're very versitile. And we're a pwnsome sport.

During the off-football season, however, is when the real fun starts. Oh, winterguard, my springtime passion. We have our own special contests where we try to get the very best shows put together. Our accompanying music can range from soft jazz to show tunes to hard rock, or anywhere in between.

Last year, our winterguard got first place at NTCA using this show:


So, all ye who colorguard love, rejoice, rejoice! For a colorguard thread hath been made at last!

Yes guard is awesome, my guard from our band is starting our very first winterguard this year. But really this could probably be included in the marching band section. I know they're not the same but they are similar enough.

Eeeeh I love guard! I'm only in winter guard though, I'm in pit during marching season. Color guard is cooler then the rest of the band I think, without them, the entire show is boring...er. Heh. (I have a love/hate relationship with marching band)

When I was little I wanted to be in color guard because I knew someone who was in color guard. When I finally got to High School I never joined though because my schedule was so busy. My friend joined and loved it. It looks like a lot of fun. She got a really bad bruise from her rifle though (I think it was her rifle) and it looked really painful.

^Ah yes, the wonderfull pain of color guard. I missed my flag during a toss once and it nailed me in the face. There was a bruise there for a couple of day XD

That's probably what I would end up doing to be completely honest. I can have really bad hand-eye coordination sometimes.

I got to hold my friend's flag and she taught me how to spin it. It was pretty fun, but I almost nailed myself in the shin when I dropped it. XD

Oh, at finals last year, this little triangular group did a triple paralell with theirr rifles and one of them failed to catch it and hit the girl in front of them in the base of the skull. Pretty lucky she didn't die, if you ask me. She just sort of fell down and didn't move for about 32 counts.

... their show wasn't really that good, anyway, even if you completely missed the knockout.

And also last year, I was in the middle at the end of the show during football season. We did a big toss at the very end, and I almost dropped it. I hit myself in the knee and couldn't walk right for a few days after. I was sitting there, frozen with a smile, tears running down my face. There was this huge reddish-blueish-purpleish bruise. It looked all mottled and gross.

And this year, we're doing a Little Red Riding Hood show. I'll put it up as soon as we're finished learning it, have our new uniforms, and Spicer (our director) tapes it.

Colorguard is the best thing that has ever happened to me it's made me become more outgoing and I'm not afraid to look like an idiot anymore. This year we were supposed to have a winterguard we had it started and had 4 rehersals but then somethings happened and we ended up "without a director" because my director from marching band had to say he was the director cause our guard instructors none of them work in our school district so they couldn't say they were the director. Then the marching band director got in some trouble and now he is no longer a director for marching band and obviously winterguard. Our show was going to be really cool too, it was going to be music form the show "Lost" and we learned about the first 2 minutes in the 4 rehersals we had. Hopefully we will be able to have a winterguard next year.

As for being hit with a flag that I can relate to, one day during band camp I was trying out for a flag duete and we did a parallel and instead of catching it the pole came around and hit my in the stomach, I've got countless bruise on my legs, arms, and hands from all sorts of things such as falling with a big flag, bad pitch, and a million other reasons. Best sport ever.

I know. Smile through the pain, right? Does your teacher make you do awkward moves that are never going to look good on anybody? Ours does, sometimes, like this one thing on that video that makes me think of strippers.

Don't you just hate it when you toss about half a beat behind and it makes the whole thing look like slop? It happens to me all the time (hand eye coordination, much?) and I always feel like I'm to blame for a poor score.

^ My guard is almost never together and I think my director is going to start teaching everything as a ripple cause we do everything together as a ripple and everything thats a ripple together (mainly the noobs cause they suck). We just have awkward work in general and we do a very hard level work but do do very good in it just our shows are stupid and they give people who did easier work but perfectly a higher score than the harder work but it's not exactly perfect.

You know what I think your newbies are doing? I think they're probably doing the same thing our newbies used to do. I think they're watching you vets, and then just copying. If I'm not mistaken, your newbies hang out in a group in the back, no? If they do, then send them to the front, and make them actually learn instead of copy.

Awkward work does very much suck, and it is very much difficult to make yourself do.

No it's not that it's just they don't count and don't know how to mark time and get distracted. When doing warm ups and learning work we actually put them in the back so they can watch the vets but usually there will also be a vet in the back to count and help them but they don't listen.

*sigh*

Make them run laps when they're wrong? And then don't let them go home until they get it right? It'll teach them to count and pay attention, at least. But it'll probably make them hate guard...

Yea, we have an awkward guard and we run as a warm up alongg a million other things like 140 crunches and 500 fricken drop spins on both left and right. But what we do is if they don't know the work or haven't had enough practice because they were missing marching band for unexcusable reasons (like work which is what happened to one person) they sit out from the performance that day but they go to the rehersal we have before the show and can't performe which would suck if that happened to me.

Ah, our guard does that, too. And now our director has instigated mandatory grade checks, since literally more than half of our guard is failing at least one class. We have our grades checked every time we come to class, and if we're failing, we have to go to all of our teachers, not just the classes we're failing in, and get a form signed with our grade on it. Crazy.

Oh at my school you have to do that if your on a sports team and we call it a run around sheet. They used to check grades for sports every quarter but not its every 5- weeks. I foyu have 1 F your on probation, 2 F's you can't play games, and 3 F's your kicked off the team. Because our band is different from every other band because were a band of all the middle and high schools of our district otherwise we would have like 10 bands with 5 people on it. So grades aren't really checked like they should be but like if you don't pay the money for registration our director can make it so we don't graduate I guess.

Wow. It would suck to not graduate because of not paying dues. In my school district, if you fail any class, you cannot partivipate in any extra-curricular activities whatsoever. I think I prefer your system.

So, which do you like better: chain flags or swing flags?

I have never used chain or swing flags the year before I joined we had swing flags.

Ah. What kinds of equipment have you used before?

I've used 6 foot and five and a half foot flags and then like 15 foot giant PVC flags for the end of a show that had a huge silk on it. But in our guard we've had rifles, swing flags, fly-overs, a GIANT flyover that we used for the opener of our show last year where 6 guard members stood behind it and held it like a curtain ehile the band and the rest of the guard where hidden, then there was a dance and flag solo goin on infront of the curtain, then this past year we took the first fly over cut it into strips had them put on t-poles and had 8 guardies pick them up from the front sidelines and run through the band at the same time the giants 15 foot flags came from behind the props the t-poles were about 20 feet. Oh we also had guardies dance with the fabric that had to wooden balls in the for weight when they threw them. I thinks that is all we have used.

There are pictures of the big flags, t flags, and 3 of our 4 flags from this past year on my profile, if you cant understand how I explained them.