Equipment knowledge

[meatwagon]

I have recently started colorguard as a seperate class in the fall in a public high school. This is a brand new world to me and I was wondering what are considered normal ability levels for equipment.

Obviously flag, rifle, and sabre but what work should be expected by a sophmore vs. a senior. I am trying to build a core foundation of work for a curriculum.

Thanks

[guardjazzsax]

well... personally as a guard "student" myself, i found out that.... my freshman year i was really quite horrible, poor technique, couldn't dance at all...yet, i still had the personality to work hard

sophomore year, i developed on my personality.. got much better technique, but still couldn't tdance

then my junior year, i am top of the guard, good leader, all that stuff.. strong personality... a good personality for the hard work guard does..and my schools on rifle and flag are really quite good. but i suggest, what my guard instructor did to our guard...

teach all the girls rifles in basics week.... b/c lots of them will love it..and work on it..to be on the rifle line *the appropriate response of course*

[sonya]

I dunno, I'm sorry if this is a stupid question, but what do you mean by "a brand new world" to you..?

[SCVBabe2004]

Hey don't sweat it! I jst started up a program at our middle school and i know what you mean. Its a little overwhelming but it can be really fun for you and your guard. I started doing guard in my sophomore year and practiced SO much on both flag and rifle to be the best. Now i'm a junior, a captain and have probably the best technique in my guard., and thats due to the awesome instructor i had who told us that the more you practice, the more fun you'll have. I suggest just starting eveyone on flag so they are all equal then if some are interested in weapons, hand 'em out and teach them the basics. You never know but your guard could be more enthusiastic than you think and with a little push top practice could be really great.

do you really do guard and jazz sax? cause thats exactly what i do too?

[SCVBabe2004]

omg im so sorry, i misunderstood your question! all you have to do is practice and you'll be fine. The more you practice, the better you get. you might have the technical skills of a senior as a freshman if you practice enough.

sorry again!

[LisaLisaMoMeesa]

I have recently started colorguard as a seperate class in the fall in a public high school. This is a brand new world to me and I was wondering what are considered normal ability levels for equipment.

Obviously flag, rifle, and sabre but what work should be expected by a sophmore vs. a senior. I am trying to build a core foundation of work for a curriculum.

Thanks

One thing that can help you as you develop a guard curriculum is to contact your local winterguard/marching band judging circuit. Ask them for their requirements/judging standards for each level of color guard. (ie A guard, open, world class, etc). For each level different things are expected, such as basic equipment handling technique, spatial responsibility, movement, different levels of difficultys, and wider vocabulary. (OK, what the heck does that mean???)

Basic equipment technique. This means the "basic moves", angles, spins, tosses, etc. Things that would be evaluated would be free hand placement, cleanliness (Yes, even today), comfort and ease at performing these moves. Spatial responsibility would be the ability to do drill movement, as well as body carraige, etc. Movement - dance, body movement while using equipment. The different levels of difficulty would come in with movement, spatial responsibility and basic teqnique all together. Also a wide vocabulary. This is how "much" work the student can perform. A wide variety of "moves" on all difficulty levels, utilizing all planes and directions coupled with movement and drill.

Like I said, your local judging community could be of a big help to you.

Good luck.

Edited November 30, 2002 by LisaLisaMoMeesa

[drumlaw80]

I have recently started colorguard as a seperate class in the fall in a public high school. This is a brand new world to me and I was wondering what are considered normal ability levels for equipment.

Obviously flag, rifle, and sabre but what work should be expected by a sophmore vs. a senior. I am trying to build a core foundation of work for a curriculum.

Thanks

Throwing large objects really high into the air, and catching without them coming down onto your head and knocking you out in the middle of your show is considered good.

[byline]

First and foremost, they have to be able to handle equipment and march at the same time. Without fail, that was the biggest challenge I encountered teaching beginners how to perform guard work (and not always just beginners, either). I started guard relatively late in life, myself (19), and having marched in band, I thought it would be a piece of cake to do guard. What I didn't realize--and what most people don't realize till they do it--is how hard it is to coordinate two or more physical movements, with the lower body doing one thing and the upper body doing something completely different. After lots of frustration, I finally got the hang of it, but it didn't come naturally, and it didn't come quickly.

Be prepared for it to all fall apart the first few times your guard puts work to drill. It's kind of nightmarish, watching something you've cleaned in a block turn into a great, big train wreck on the field or floor, but that's natural. It may be that you need to clean all over again, but this time from the standpoint of integrating work with drill. It's a completely different set of physical and mental responsibilities than just working in a block.

After teaching guard for 14 years, the one thing I learned about beginners vs. more talented and/or experienced guard members is that they will learn, and 99 percent of them will perform whatever you put in front of them. But you have to take into account your "weakest" (I hate that word, but for lack of a better one, I'll use it) guard member, and make sure you write what he or she can perform. If you write something that you know is too difficult for that one individual, in the hope that by some miracle they'll eventually be able to pull it off, chances are it will come back to haunt you. In very rare situations, I've seen such individuals work their butts off to where finally, by the end of the season, they were able to perform stuff that was way beyond their capabilities. But most of the time, those members were overwhelmed by it all and were never able to perform up to the level of the rest of the guard. Which wasn't good for that person, and wasn't good for the guard, as a whole. So I finally learned to write to the level of my weakest member. That didn't mean I wrote basic shows. I just made sure I wrote work I knew every single person in my guard would eventually be able to perform.

Also, make sure you break down your work and subdivide all the counts, so that each individual knows where the flag or rifle and body positions are for each count. That's the one thing that drove me nuts in my drum corps experience (and I still see it happening in guard rehearsals today). A lot of instructors rely solely on the "Simon says" method of teaching guard work, where they simply demonstrate a section of work in front of the guard and then expect each individual to mimic it exactly. I see a lot of sloppiness coming out of that method, because the guard instructor doesn't bother to clarify things from the beginning. So then guard members develop bad habits because they're practicing a piece of work incorrectly. It's much harder to fix that later on than it is in the beginning.

Another thing: If you have a lot of body movement combined with guard work, then in the beginning--no matter how good your best guard members are--make sure you teach the guard work and body movement separately, then slowly integrate them. If you see things that aren't uniform, stop and work on those things then. I learned this the hard way: Don't wait! And if you have work to a fast tempo in the music, slow it way down so that each member is in unison with the others on each count, then gradually speed it up. It will fall apart the first few times you speed it up, but then the members will gradually work it out till they get it. I never had success starting out teaching fast work at its intended tempo; I had a lot more success slowing it down and breaking it down till each person got it. Yes, it's time-consuming, and some of your more experienced members will probably be impatient with it, but don't be put off by that. You'll all be rewarded in the end with a cohesive unit whose timing is tight, as opposed to a collection of individuals struggling to stay together.

As others have said, teach the basics first, then build on that, and you'll have a strong guard program. Good luck! :)

Edited December 4, 2002 by byline

[LisaLisaMoMeesa]

Throwing large objects really high into the air, and catching without them coming down onto your head and knocking you out in the middle of your show is considered good.

Good & simple explanation. I do have a way of over complicating things. :)

[LancerFi]

May I add something that Ralph Pace once told us?

Paraphrasing here:

Practice does not make perfect...if you are practicing it incorrectly...

Practice makes permanent - if you are practicing something incorrectly, it will always be incorrect, if you're practicing with technique, emotion, correctly, etc. then practice will make pemanent something close to perfect.

But, I'm forgetting there is no tick system, so there is no need to go through each count and see where the hands/feet/head are supposed to be....I guess the above used to make sense, but in this day of judging...it may not matter.

Anyway, from about 11 on, while at home I did basics, basics, basics that built up my arms. Also, for the 11 years I marched, I was one of the only left handed rifles , so I would also add that you should learn to throw out of both hands, rather than turn around like guards do now. You'll be a stronger rifle, and hey, maybe it will catch on again..... :P

And if you find something you're weak at, practice that much, much more...I was 5'5" and weight 102 when I marched in 2-7 and prior to that in the Reveries was maybe 85 pounds...so to build up, I did my tosses when alone or during breaks from parallel-(straight across)-to get a triple and quad or even a 5 from there really can build some stamina, also out of both hands! However, I don't believe I did a 5 ever that way!

I find the flag the most difficult, so I won't add anything to that. For saber, it seemed to me, once I knew how to spin a rifle, oh did that saber come naturally....albeit a litte too much emphasis, back then sabers were supposed to have finesse. And as far as dance, well that's all Japanese to me...not really, but we'll leave it at that..... ^0^

I only have my experience to draw on, that's why it's all about me - what I mean is I can only tell you in my terms how I did it....hope some of this helps...

Hi Sue!!!

Good luck to all who are beginning!

Nancy Scopa-Vetrano

Edited December 29, 2002 by LancerFi