This winter guard season is about to come to an end. Championships is the culmination of a season of sweat and tears...passion and devotion. As any other season, I come away with an array of emotions, thoughts, and ideas. I've reached a point in my guard career where I have no more to gain and really don't have any more to lose. I'm at peace with who I am as an instructor and some time ago, lost my ego in exchange for the betterment of the kids and the activity as a whole. Doing that, has allowed me to see things differently. I talk to people differently. I listen differently. I judge differently. I instruct differently. Do I follow criteria and rules? Of course I do. Do I want my teams to win? Of course I do. Somewhere though, I lost the ego. I saw that a person could only walk on the floor at World finals so many times or post on Facebook about the great show I'm judging so many times, before I had to stop and look around and say, "There has to be more than this."
The path I chose is one of advocacy. Kevin Spacey once said that if you have made it, then it is your job to send the elevator back down so others have the same opportunities. When I dropped my ego, I started looking around at how those of us that did make it, had it a little easier. We had less guards to compete against, classes that had a little more defined identities, and for the most part, we were all competing against ourselves who were of similar age and creating an activity that we wanted to see.
Things are different now. We...those of us who are older...were the creator of the criteria and the creator of the rules, We created rules to fit our needs. We are now judging. We are still instructing. We are making money through design and production value at the cost of the younger instructors, who don't have the experience and who don't have the perspective. Many of them are lost. It is time to send the elevator back down and give a helping hand.
"But Shelba...no one wants what we have to offer."
"Shelba...we've tried. No one comes to OUR trainings."
"But Shelba...they don't care. I mean...we tell them they need training."
Yeah, yeah, yeah.. You know what I have to say to that? BULLSHIT! We haven't tried hard enough. You know why? Because, often times...many times in fact, young people or people who lack perspective that comes with age and experience, don't realize what they don't know. They don't always grasp the danger inherent in the activity or grasp that they even need help. Many don't understand recaps and many feel as if the criteria reads like the instructions of an Ikea purchase. When we say "training" many don't even know what that word means. Is it basics? Is it cleaning? How do we train the body? When is o.k. to blend body and equipment in one motion? Here are a couple of numbers for you.
In Dayton this year, there are 120 colorguards registered for the Scholastic A class. Dayton as we all know, is pretty much for the best of the best. In a quick survey I did of 5 circuits...there was a total of 247 guards registered at their championships who will fall onto the Regional A sheet. That's just 5 circuits. This means that there are thousands of kids around the country who fall on the regional sheet and hundreds of instructors teaching those units. There are things about these units we don't know. We don't know the experience level of the instructors. We don't know if they have had any training by their local school or band in basic skills of coaching and safety. We don't know what their educational levels are and we don't know the situation of their financial status, rehearsal space, staffing capabilities, and rehearsal time. Not knowing this information, but knowing that there are thousands of kids who are in these gyms with these instructors, creates potential problems.
We as an activity are struggling to define what introductory, basic, and intermediate looks like in all four captions. I've written about it and posted about it on Facebook numerous times, but I think it's more than that. It's more than creating a policy on promotion during the season or telling judges that "training" must take precedent over design. That statement though, that I hear in every circuit, every place I judge is subjective based on any one person's personal experiences. We struggle with these concepts, because we aren't reaching across the aisle to truly discuss them. We find excuses to not address it. We fear change. We fear working together. We let the past get in our way. We create arbitrary borders that keep dialog from occurring. Mostly though, we aren't bringing the true stakeholders to the table...the instructors...the young ones...the ones who are lost, confused, and scratching their heads in understanding how to take a young guard from band camp in July to Championships in April, while they have a minimal budget, minimal staff help, and minimal rehearsal time.
On any given Saturday in October or February, you will find a marching band competition or winter guard show where thousands of kids will present their productions. At those shows are judges. Many...if not most of those shows have judges who are flown in from outside the region. This is not a bad thing. It's gives the units perspective. There is one drawback, though. How do I as a judge who is getting a paycheck, stay invested in a region of the country I don't even live in? What incentive do I have to keep the dialog going after the guard leaves the floor and after their three minutes are up? On any given Friday in October or February, you will see judges posting on Facebook about the flights they are on and the show they are headed to. On any given Sunday in October or February, you will see a multitude of "thank you's" as judges depart home. It's all on the up and up. I believe that everyone is doing their part for the kids. However, when I get on that plane on Sunday morning, I worry. I worry that there is a guard out there...one of those 247, that is doing something absurd. I told them to take it out. I let my score reflect it, but I'm not sure they understood and it bothers me. I worry about safety. I worry that there are judges who don't truly understand training in it's most purest form and are asking those in regional A to do more when if fact, they should be encouraged to do and spend less. In fact...I've heard it happen and in every circuit I've judged in. I'm concerned that there are concussions we don't know about, broken wrists, broken ankles, shin splints, and dislocated knees that are happening, because we aren't really talking about what matters...the safety of the kids and how we need to create a system of education and judging that helps those hundreds of young instructors keep those thousands of kids safe.
I make it very clear when I bring these topics up that I don't profess to know the best course of action. I also realize that any change would be like unraveling a small necklace wrapped into a thousand knots. I know this, though. Change takes time, but change doesn't happen until the process is started. I realize that many fear change. I know that you have to have the voice of the stakeholders impacted and I know that not all stakeholders will care and will fight you on the change. This is social cause advocacy 101. I also know that when you talk safety, sometimes rules need to be made. Period and end of story.
I am advocating for a different system of education and judging of the Regional A, non WGI bound regional guards. I am advocating for dialog. If we are truly in this for the kids, then we need to start looking at how training occurs and what the skills are we are demanding in these classes. We will all win in the end, when education takes priority over competition and ego.
The driver is going to be the scoresheet. On the FFCC sheet, there is an attempt to reward ex over vocab by split-weighting the downstairs captions 7%-13%. That's a start. You get rewarded when you train for achievable and clean on an individual level on both the implements and body skills. However, design is still 20% of the sheet and GE is 40%. To emphasize training (as both a necessity and point of competitive focus), shift 10 points from upstairs to downstairs.
ReplyDeleteWhat's this accomplish? The necessity to train and advance skill level all season in order to get rewarded on the sheet. Too often, RA-level shows are won or lost during staff meetings in August instead of in the gym September to April. If design and GE are essentially slotted by February (most often, this is the case), the only thing that can move the competitive needle is training and, by extension, performance. In other words, it's suddenly more possible to "pop a show" and be ranked/rated above a show with superior design. It also requires the teams with superior design to keep working on skills to maintain their advantage.