If you ever want to be apart of the most criticized section of the marching band I highly suggest joining the color guard. You hear of people complaining from every corner of a high school about how people who aren't a program don't understand said program. I have found that this is especially true for a high school color guard.
Nothing is more degrading than saying you are in color guard and someone doesn't understand what that is so you have to refer to yourself as a flag twirler for them to even remotely understand what you do. There is much more to color guard than "twirling a flag around."
The color guard starts their marching band season almost as soon as their winter one is over with spring training. During spring training new or less advanced members are worked up to speed on technique and new pieces of equipment. They learn what it means to be apart of a large group and how being in time is really important. They learn dance, flag, rifle, and sabre technique at a fast pace. From there an audition process is held to determine what line you will be on for majority of the show.
After the director sorts everyone into their parts they begin to learn choreography of every form for the show. They then spend months cleaning the choreography trying to get everything perfect. On top of learning the show they also learn parade and pep routines. A color guard member doesn't always have to deal with their own section though at our school. Our color guard director teaches the band a dance block that is full of dance basics, dance visuals and the occasional dance or rifle section with the guard and another section. When we do that our color guard director teaches the basics and the guard members are in charge of making sure our partner or the section can do it as perfect as possible.
People may say things about the band looking funny or doing something weird but the color guard gets it about twenty times worse and it's not just from people outside of the program but it also, and more frequently, comes from fellow marchers. The color guard is put on the field strictly of the visual aspect, they don't normally contribute to the sound of the marching band at all. So they get made fun of much more than a band kid because of how they have to do certain things or even the uniforms they have to wear because the color guard has a different uniform than the marching band that tend to be more form fitting and sometimes more revealing than the marching band uniforms.
There are people in my marching band that will blame the color guard for bad scores before they will blame the band itself. Which the guard always finds hilarious because until this last year we only accounted for ten points of the whole score. Now they're worth fifteen and nobody is really that interested in what they are out there doing, they showed up to see their child or their grandchild play the trumpet.
Typically the guard is put there to help tell the story of the show from the facial expressions to the way they move to how they spin the equipment. It's one of the hardest things to have a happy show and have to force a smile while your own schoolmates and random strangers are booing and throwing trash at you. It's a feeling nobody in the band would ever really understand and it's a feeling that no performer should ever have to experience.
I don't know about other schools because I only attended one, but at my school the color guard has a really bad reputation of being harlots. Years ago there used to be a very bad issue with that kind of stuff in our program and people never let it die down, there have also been a few girls who kept that very much alive. That doesn't mean everyone in that section is like that. Nobody ever stops to actually talk to the color guard they just assume they know because of stereotypes. Band kids and even more shocking the band parents are notorious for keeping the stereotype alive by spreading rumors and gossip. One lie can change the life of a person or even an entire section, please always keep that in mind.
A color guard members's eight minuets consist of making sure they're in time with the other guard member's around them. Perfect free arms, releasing on the right counts and putting the right amount of power into the equipment for the correct toss, bodywork under our equipment making sure their bodies are moving the right way and that their face has the correct emotion portrayed on it. They also have to make sure that they are in the correct spot because if they aren't it could mean sudden death for anyone else out on the field or even themselves.
Being In the color guard means being open to criticism from all sides and it means always being put at the bottom. Most people only think about the band part of the marching band but there is so much more, the band doesn't just play their instruments and walk around a field, they dance, and in rare cases, spin too. Likewise the color guard doesn't just twirl a flag, they toss hunks of wood and metal in the air for fun.
On average a color guard member will spend a thousand dollars on fees for a whole year. This doesn't include the extra money for tape for their equipment and fun fact, the more pieces of equipment they spin the more tape they need so the cost of tape can add up fairly quick. Or the rifles and sabres because they have to buy them on their own. The average rifle costs thirty-two dollars and the average weapon line member has to have a minimum of two rifles for a show and they're supposed to be replaced every year. The cheapest sabre our guard instructor allows is one hundred and forty-five dollars. The shoes for marching band are another thirty-two dollars and some guards spin with gloves so that's another extra fee. So a member on all three lines is looking towards spending upwards of 1,271 dollars for one year. Not cheap to be ignored for a whole season.
Every member in the color guard at my school has some sort of a shoulder, knee, hip, back, wrist or ankle problem and if they don't then you know they are new. Sometimes it comes from doing a stretch or a dance wrong or not spinning equipment properly. Sometimes it comes from pushing themselves to their breaking point and then going further. I've never met people more dedicated to what they do than the color guard members on the weapon line of my school.
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A Memoir from the Band Room
Non-FictionThe life of a High School band department is full of trials and tribulations that people not in the programs don't hear of or don't think about. Sit in with a few members from the band department and hear their side of things. Featuring: some the fi...
