#wgi guard

[chai-en-kaadhale]

single and a half

[wgisportofthefarts]

I literally just made this account rn to post this

does anyone have any thoughts about WGI independent world rankings this year??

fusion coming in first? ETUDE COMING IN SECOND??? blessed sacrament only coming in third because paramount got a .10 penalty???? like that is actually crazy

personally as much as i loved fusion this year it didn’t seem like a gold medal show? meanwhile sac and paramount’s were crafted so well i’m amazed neither of them came in AT LEAST 2nd.

[talkorsomething]

ok so i gotta preface this w/ i am autistic but like, only very minorly so i understand & can make "proper" facial expressions and whatever

But! Hey tumblr guardies i am In The Tags again. With a question!

. . .

Um so how do you like smile While Counting because i can't (yet) count in my head & our instructors are starting to get on us about not smiling T_T i'm trying my best to present up so i at least have that going for me, but every time my "performing now" face is literally like 😐 ...

I dont want to get yelled at for not doing it but i dont get how im supposed to without counting in my head (& then getting off beat because i tend to count fast) .........

[my-colorguard-photo-album]

!Hello!

My Name is Joseph, and I am a colorguard student for my high school, I have been doing guard for 1 year and that was when I did WGPO, I decided to post all of my favorite colorguard memories onto here bc we do not have a social media page but this is my personal photo album. Thanks, and have a good day

[izzy-mc-fizzy]

Ok one of the most shocking and euphoric moments as a guardie is when you go in for a big toss and accidentally whip out something even bigger that you didn’t even know you could do. It’s even better if you didn’t know did it until your friends who saw it start screaming “oh my god girl that was a double!” It’s just such a confidence boost to know that I have so much more in me than I know, and that I just need to work to bring it out

[tipytap]

guess who has a really long competition tomorrow :,)

[snissaao]

Never ask fantasia winterguard what their 2012 show was

[summersinyourblood]

waiting patiently for a kate bush indoor show

[sugarrzchuuz]

Twst colorguard AU but its Savannaclaw getting PT, Acedeuce getting concussions doing 45’s, And Octavinelle trio sobbing over losing a raffle for a saber

[flarecolorguard]

全国大会お疲れさまでした!!

Flare5年目のゆいです！ 3年ぶりの全国大会。 とにかく楽しかった！やりきった！

その言葉に限ります。みんなの本番中の姿や表情、本番後の笑顔がほんとに素敵で、誇らしいメンバーだなと改めて思いました︎。

私が本番中に見た景色をみなさんにもおすそ分けしたいくらい幸せな景色でした。 みなさん！YouTubeで全国大会の動画はご覧になりましたか？ まだ見てない方は、ほんとに大好きで最高のshowなので この後すぐ見てくださいね！ （その時に一緒にメンバーのインタビューも覗いてくださいね！みんな良いとこ喋ってるので！）

まだまだこのshowは続きます。 私にもまだこの後どうなるのかは分かっておらず、ドキドキワクワクしています。

どんなshowになるのかみなさん楽しみにしててください！ （私も楽しみにしています！）

このメンバーで踊れることに感謝して最後まで楽しみます！

[emmaestrella]

hi hey hello im gonna brain dump real quick abt the tampa independent world show because brain go brrrrrrr

n e ways one of my friends/teammates went to wgi regionals atlanta today bc shes there visiting for spring break right? and tampa independent world is performing there right? and so at the end of their show this guy (nicknamed aerial guy in my head) tosses the rifle like RIDICULOUSLY HIGH in the air it has to be a seven or eight (i cant count rotations and also the video she sent is too blurry) DOES AN AERIAL UNDERNEATH AND THEN CATCHES IT. AND THEN HE WALKS BACK TO THE TABLES SO NONCHALANTLY AND STANDS THERE WITH HIS HANDS ON THE RIFLE AND THE TIP TOUCHING THE GROUND IN A FINAL POSE LIKE “yeah i just did that” AND IM GOING FRICKIN INSANE OVER IT their show is so cool with the tables n i love their silks and everything

[atwoslottoaster-blog]

www.patrickrfblakley.com

I just uploaded some fresh new FREE drumline warmups and I added a page for FREE winterguard music compilations! Lemme know if anyone has any requests too, I can definitely help you out.

[greaterspawnislands]

for the cafe asks...vanilla chai?

vanilla chai— do you have any hobbies that your followers don’t know about? or any hobbies that you once had, but stopped doing?

All through high school, I was realllyy into guard. I was on my marching band's colorguard team, and I was on my area's winterguard competition team. If you don't know what winterguard is, it's the same flags you see spinning at high school football games, but a lot more dramatized. Instead of spinning to live band music, a winterguard show is created around a certain song. Winterguard involves a lot more dancing expertise, and generally also a higher level of technical skill than colorguard (excluding DCI). Additionally, winterguard teams can also use wooden rifles and sabres as additional weapons in their show. The technical difficulty can range from regional competitions all the way up to international teams. I'll link a show that I really enjoy, with the caveat that this is wayyy above any skill level I reached: WGI Pride of Cincinnati 2019.

Anyways if anyone else reading this knows winterguard, I'll say that I was on the rifle line 3 out of my 4 years, the shows I was in used the songs New World by Bjork, Dancing On My Own covered by Calum Scott, Anthropodie by Christopher Beck, and Vogue by Madonna <- last show was sadly cancelled cause of COVID which sucks cause it was gonna be our best yet for sure :(

°.✩┈┈┈┈∘*cafe asks*∘┈┈┈┈✩.°

[colorguard4hs]

Color Guard The Chameleon

When it comes to color guard it is ever changing. Yes I know color guard is not very popular but to the people in the community it is always exciting. I didn’t really understand ever changing color guard was until I started it my freshman year of high school. I thought wow this consists of so many different elements and is very tiring. I remember when my team had their first competition. Our twice a week practices that only added up to 4 hours of practice prepared us for a somewhat ok performance. We performed, cleaned up, and then watched the higher level teams perform. As I sat down to watch a  performance, huge groups of performers and parents hurried into the room with huge wheels of props and equipment. My team didn’t have this. We didn’t have the huge group of people, equipment, and props. I then watched as these performers did near perfect shows with mostly everyone on count. I realized that my team was more for fun but these groups were here for competing. I graduated high school after doing color guard for 4 years. I was sad and also happy about my growth. This year I was thrown back into the color guard world when my little sibling started high school and joined color guard. I tried explaining the hardships of color guard but my sibling didn’t care. I then saw them have practice everyday. Then on Wednesday they had long practices after school and Saturdays they had many hours of practice. This wasn’t what I was used to. My sibling had costumes and drill sets and props and we had nothing near that. My sibling had bingo fundraisers every week and three coaches, where at my school we struggled to have one. I now understand that color guard is different. To my team of ten it was a community and was something to escape our lives but to others it’s a sport, a competition, and something to grow and get better at. I linked below information about color guard from the company and organization, WGI, which is where most competitions happen through. On their site they talk about Scholastic classes (where you rank at depending on skill set) being for color guards representing their schools. Although some color guards are like mine, small and barely starting out, others are like my siblings trying to bring pride to their school by going big or going home. I now see that color guard is a chameleon of experience and it’s not the same for any school.

https://wgi.org/color-guard/

[bittysfoodbaby]

In honor of my final first marching band competition (which is delayed to next week bc of inclement weather), I figured it's time we talked about my marching band/drum corps AU called "The Marching Wellies," where everything is the same but instead of a hockey team, SMH is now a marching band! (Working title until I find out what the actual Samwell mascot is.)

Concept

Samwell is renowned nationally for their unique show concepts and generous scholarships for its members, both new and returning. With former figure skater turned color guard member, Eric Bittle comes into the band, thinking seriously as he becomes one year closer to aging out of competing in DCI and WGI.

Terminology

There are some terms and acronyms that's going to be used across this post. I'm leaving terms up at the top just to make sure you understand what the fuck is going on.

DCI - Drum Corps International. Competitive marching band circuit for independent drum and bugle corps (DBCs) targeted towards student musicians and performers (high school through college).

WGI - Winter Guard International. Competitive indoor color guard, winds, and percussion circuit targeted towards student musicians and performers (high school through college). While DCI is completely independent and so are its member corps, WGI has a separate circuit for schools called "Scholastic" that allows high school guards to compete.

Age-out. The maximum age a performer can be in DCI and WGI is twenty-one years old, although members who turn twenty-two on or after June 1st is still eligible to compete in DCI's Open and World-class corps, referred to as a "bonus year" by DCI. WGI's max age is dependent on what class a performer competes in. For the 2023 season, Independent A-class performers cannot be over 22 on April 1st, 2022 and Independent Open-class performers cannot be over 23 years old. World-class performers may be of any age, although many guards limit their members to 22-23 as their programs are focused on youth members.

Sections and Leadership

In essence, Bitty's main crew is leadership within the band; loosely based off my first band friends being leadership my freshman year and eventually being in a leadership position with the friends in my grade!

Drum Major: Jack Zimmermann

Percussion section leader/SL: Johnson

Winds SL: Ransom

Brass SL: Holster

Color Guard Captain: Shitty (We'll explain this later)

Equipment manager: Lardo

The drum major is the captain of the entire band. They oversee everyone in all the sections and act as a liaison between the band and staff. If the section leaders can't answer someone's question, the section leader goes to the drum major.

The section leader is self-explanatory. They literally lead their section. Sometimes they may lead practices outside of official rehearsals, assist in teaching music, or act as a mentor to their section. The guard captain has the same exact role as the section leaders and are on the same level.

Some bands might have an equipment manager because of the sheer amount of instruments, props, and color guard equipment used in marching band. Lardo's role as team manager for SMH directly translates as the equipment manager of the band. While she may not play something in the band (hinthintnudgenudge), she works with leadership to make sure everything is organized for transportation and storage.

Backstories

Jack arrived at Samwell as an ex-DCI competitor before realizing his time is almost up in the competitive sphere. Came into Samwell as a section leader before climbing up the ranks as drum major by his sophomore year. He's ran the band under lock and key out of his own personal outlook on life, which is quite regimented. That same regimented lifestyle and perfectionist nature has been drilled into him, mostly out of his time being in this sphere where everyone demands perfection out of you.

Bitty's experience in figure skating translated well into performing in color guard, something that led to him performing for his own high school (with HEAVY hesitation due to the worry of Bitty's sexuality being found out through guard.) Eventually, he landed himself as captain of Madison County High School's color guard and got noticed for it. With the very generous full-living scholarship, Bitty applied and signed to Samwell very quickly.

Ransom and Holster both had their typical band geek phase, but their friendship got off on the wrong foot after both of them met each other at a Bluecoats audition camp and despised each other for various reasons. (Ransom thought Holster was very loud and brash while Holster thought that Ransom had a stick up his ass and was very uptight at first.) Neither of them got in, but made it out as good friends. (you didn't hear this from me but Ransom and Holster were stuck to each other like glue during their orientation week because the Bluecoats audition was a year before their freshman year.)

Shitty is the kind of person who would literally do anything if it meant getting closer with his crush. In high school, he played saxophone and was hellbent on making sure he was able to play it in college. That is, until he met Lardo. He occasionally plays sax for the meme (and because he’s in the Samwell Korean Pops Orchestra because again, Lardo.)

Shitty "accidentally" walked in on an indoor guard rehearsal and that was the moment she fell in love with color guard. Lardo encouraged him to join and soon enough, became co-captain with Lardo his senior year at Samwell. (Or at least somewhere close to that. He never had an official leadership role, but was just one of those seniors who gave out very good advice.)

Lardo’s journey in the guard was because the band director at her high school needed a little girl for a show when she was in 5th grade and she just… stayed with the band the entire time. She learned the skills despite not being in the actual band in middle school and when it was her time to join, she almost became captain on the spot.

The Organizations They Marched With

Everyone in Bitty's crew has marched with an Open or World-class group outside of Samwell.

Jack has marched for the Calgary Stampede Showband (International Class), River City Rhythm in Anoka, MN (Open Class), The Cadets in Allentown, PA (World Class), and Boston Crusaders in Boston, MA (World Class). Boston was Jack's final corps and his age-out season was the same year Jack enrolled at Samwell.

Bitty has marched for the Madison County High School marching band back home in Madison, GA and Paramount Open in Atlanta, GA (Open Class). Bitty would have marched for Pegasus in Macon, GA (Open Class) as it was closer to him, but Pegasus moved to Central Florida the year he was going to audition.

Ransom and Holster have both marched for their respective high schools, although both of them auditioned for the Bluecoats, one of the top three world-class drum corps in DCI. Neither of them got in, but who needs a top drum corps when you have your best friend?

When Lardo was old enough, she performed with Onyx in Dayton, OH (World Class), Fusion World in Clifton, NJ (World Class), and AMP World in Camden, NJ (World Class). She is taking a break from the independent circuit in order to focus on her art career and her home team at Samwell. (Fun fact: If Lardo has performed with AMP and Fusion, this means she has spun with both my irl instructors when they were in high school.)

I don't expect a full fic for this to come out anytime soon (I wish tho), but I just wanted to throw this out there for the fun of it. It's my senior season and I'm grateful for all the memories I have of this band.

For any future posts that deal with the marching wellies (the marching band) or samwell independent (the color guard), they will be respectively tagged as "#the marching wellies" and "#samwell independent."

[chsspeculator]

Indoor Drumline Reflects On Dayton

NatalieJiang, Seniors and News Editor From April 18 to 21, the Chattahoochee High School Indoor Drumline traveled to Dayton, Ohio to participate in the 2024 Winter Guard International (WGI) World Championships, setting a new school record for the percussion group.  This year, the indoor drumline performed their show “i ” the second part of their trilogy called “Found.”  “i” depicts a story…