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Colorguard 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 football field pouring out your heart and soul into a 6 or 7 foot flagpole for anyone who is willing to watch, or merely 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, and knowing that for 5 minutes, nothing else matters. Colorguard is performance. It's stepping onto a floor dressed in a gorgeous uniform, with the hair and make-up to match. It's smiling whole-heartedly at the hundreds of people, or just to the twenty people who paid 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 possess. 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 people 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, or sometimes not eating at all for a night, knowing what every men and women's bathroom and gym in your circuit 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 with 20 other girls whose faces you get tired of looking at for so long. It's surviving 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 your school's custodians, 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 a feeling. Not necessarily 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.
Updates:
8/16/03: Sorry that I havent' had time to update in a while. I've just been sorta busy with 2 and 1/2 weeks of band camp, then school starting back.
7/17/03: My wonderful new color guard site is born!
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