Colorguard!...Sho'nuff!/LHS Dragonettes ( Flag and Dance Line)

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Colorguard Is...

COLORGUARD ~ it isn't a hobby, an activity, or something to pass the time. It is a SPORT. It requires energy, strength, talent, and PERSONALITY. It's spending your days, nights, weekends, and summer vacations on a gym floor or a football field, pouring out your heart and soul into a 6 or 7 foot flagpole, a 3 1/2 pound rifle, or an unbalanced sabre for anyone who is willing to watch, or meerly for the sake of performance. It's hearing the words "Pay Attention! Listen! Think! Again Again Again!" over and over. It's knowing that the smart guard really is the good guard, 'one more time' really means 20, and perfect practice makes a perfect performance. It's doing endless run-throughs until your coach is satisfied, regardless of how sick or tired you are. It's the game that you love and the love of the game, an knowing that for 4 or 5, 6 or 7, 8 or 9 minutes, nothing else matters.
Colorguard is performance. It's stepping onto a field or floor dressed in a gorgeous uniform, with the hair and make-up to match. It's smiling whole-heartedly at the hundreds of people who payed money to see YOU give everything you've got. It's becoming your equipment, and focusing on your work, your guard's work, and putting a smile on the crowd's face. It's power, grace, emotion, and intensity that remains with you, and it is the pride in yourself, and the pride in the incredible talent that you and your guard posess.

Colorguard is friendship. It's an amazing sisterhood that could never exist anywhere else but here. It's being able to see each and every one of your best friends at practice, and your coach knowing it, and never putting you near each other. It's meeting poeple who have an undying passion for the same art you do, and understanding what it is that you truly go through. It's learning things about people that you never thought you'd learn, and becoming friends with people you never though you'd talk to. It's having someone to share memories with, and it's finally understanding what true friends are.

Colorguard is "roughing it." It's sleeping on busses, eating in every fast food restaurant known to man, knowing what every men and women's bathroom in your circut looks like, and knowing how to cram 40 girls into one of them to get ready. It's wearing your uniform more than your clothes, and living in the band room more than your own house. It's surving an 8 hour practice with a 10 minute break, and considering yourself lucky that you even had a break at all. It's becoming friends with every bus driver your school has, and having them be your biggest fans. It's knowing that you won't be home for days, but loving every minute (almost!) of the time away.

Colorguard is memories. It's being able to laugh at the time when you went soaring over the back drop at your first competition, and being able to recover without even thinking about it. It's sharing life stories, and showing everyone your "amazing" hidden talents. It's the guard parties, the pool parties, and what goes on on a colorguard bus. It's the hugs, smiles, frowns, and tears that come from everything from a great show to your worst performance ever. It's the tough love that your coach dishes out after the practice or performance from hell, and knowing that if he didn't believe in you, or didn't love you, he wouldn't bother. It's sitting in a circle, and reminiscing of that 'one time at band camp,' and rolling on the floor laughing over it. It's stories that you can tell your children, and grandchildren, and never regret a minute of it.

Colorguard is difficult. It's performing unbelieveably advanced work and drill with equipment that could easily knock you unconscious. It's performing in 17 degree weather, and being rushed to the hospital for frostbite and hypothermia afterwards, while grumbling that you should have never performed to begin with. It's dealing with horrible shows, upset coaches, and disgruntled teamates. It's practicing in the heat and humidity, passing out, and practicing again. It's marching with broken toes, splints on fingers, the flu, and fatigue. It's practicing until you drop, but because you love it, you keep going.

Lastly, Colorguard is a feeling. Not neccessarily one that can be explained, like happy or sad, good or bad, but it's a feeling. It's the feeling you get after stepping onto that floor for the first time, and it's the rush that goes through you when you're performing. It's the feeling you get when you come in last place and the tears flood your eyes, and it's the feeling you get when you receive that standing ovation that you've always dreamed about. It's the way you feel hearing your music for the first time, and imagining the way the finished product is going to look. It's the way you feel knowing that you are a part of something GREAT. That regardless of the judges scores or opinions, you have the best guard because of the PEOPLE in it. It's how you feel when graduation comes, and whether or not you are graduating, a piece of you and your guard is missing. It's the feeling you get when you FINALLY get it! When everything finally clicks. When you feel that true sense of unity in everything you do, and knowing that hard work pays off. It's how you feel when you KNOW you're doing what you love, and that even when your guard career is "over," a large part of you will always remember the friendships, the performances, the memories, the good and bad times, and the FEELING that you are a changed person, and that you could never be who you are now without COLORGUARD.

Peace Out!