You are a Colossal Bitch!

You are a Colossal Bitch!

That was the phrase said to me at a rehearsal once. I can still hear it. I can still see the rehearsal site. I remember every single detail of that day. It doesn't matter where or who, but that's what a color guard instructor said to me when I was perceived as not trying hard enough. The reality was that I was trying and was already very aware of my errors. I was already beating myself up, but they saw it differently. They saw a person who wasn't trying or not living up to their potential and I paid the price through verbal abuse.

This post is about how we talk to performers, how they perceive us and if we aren't careful, how our outer voice becomes their inner voice...for life. Today I see color guard members I taught back in my twenties and almost want to beg for their forgiveness in how I ran rehearsals, spoke to them, and some of the things I made them do. I was young. I didn't have anyone telling me I was wrong and was simply repeating a pattern of what I saw as a performer. I was a part of a world championship team and success was gained through tough coaching and at times, emotional abuse.  Kids don't need to be coddled, but most definitely don't need to be berated. They assuredly need to be encouraged. I don't think we do that enough as youth coaches. I know I didn't when I first started out. Sometimes I'm so caught up in getting the show finished or the phrase clean, that I forget that somewhere in count 8, are kids looking for me to lead them. They watch me and they hear me. They feel what I say.

The adolescent brain is not developed at the level the adult brain is and a teenager's perception is often based on emotion as opposed to logic. This is where much of their drama comes from. This is where misinterpretation happens. Often what an adult says is misinterpreted, because kids respond to emotion first, while we as the adult are trying to use logic. It's a skill that adults need to acquire if they want to be effective while coaching teens. What we say, how we say it, our tone, and our body language is all up for interpretation and is important. The performers we teach see themselves in us and their self-esteem is based on how we respond to them.

"You are a colossal bitch!"  To this day, I can still hear the tone as the phrase was yelled out.

The words we use are crucial. It's beyond important here in 2016, where we now know more about psychology and the human brain than ever before. I follow coaches of all types and in sports I don't even like. I enjoy learning how great coaches get their players to perform by what they say and how they say it. Some, I completely disagree with and I don't care if they are coaching an NFL linebacker or major league pitcher. I don't care if they just won the Final Four. Berating, humiliating, and throwing tantrums are not just unprofessional, but out right abusive. They are foolish. One of my favorite coaches comes from a sport that I actually dislike. His name was John Wooden and coached basketball at UCLA. He once stated that you need to find little ways to show your players that you care. "Small gestures make a big difference," he said. He won multiple NCAA titles, but his life as a coach was one of compassion and for which he is known. He believed in building cooperation, enthusiasm, team spirit, and confidence as a method for success.

"You are a colossal bitch!" This is NOT a method of building confidence.

Confidence. Think about it. How well do you build confidence in your performers? Really think about it, because we all can't be the greatest color guard instructor of all time. Sometimes we are amazing designers, but terrible motivators. Some of us are incredible technicians, but awful leaders. Some of the best choreographers are the ones we've never seen or heard about, because they stay behind the scenes and let their performers do the speaking for them. Some only coach at the local level, because that's where they know they can make the greatest difference. Going national is not important to them. Not everyone can be a nationally renowned designer or technician, but we can all be better coaches. Many, if I'm being honest, are simply what the rest of the world would call an abuser. Isn't it amazing how in sports, abuse is tolerated and often celebrated if you show enough success?

So I write this today to ask you to look at your coaching style, and ask yourself what your outside voice is telling the inside voice of your performers. Are they overweight? If so, it is most likely a given that they are concerned about costuming. They probably struggle with conditioning. How do you approach that? Are they tall and somewhat awkward? Are they they only male in your program? It must be hard for a boy to actively engage in the performing arts, while managing the male testerone of the high school scene. What about the one girl who doesn't have the same skin color as the rest of the guard? What we say matters and how we show an understanding that each performer is unique and valued, speaks volumes to our success. 

When was the last time you said these phrases?

Great job. It's getting better.

Let's come back tomorrow and get even better. 

I'm looking forward to seeing you tomorrow.

I care about you and what happens to you in your life.

I know you're struggling. I see progress. 

You can point out errors and even become angry without name calling, throwing things, and using your power as a coach to control their mind through fear.

What about the pat on the back? When was the last time you went to that one girl who is shy and uncomfortable in her body and walked up behind her on the field and said, "You are doing great. Keep it up." What about the girl who can't throw the toss with the rest of the guard or the one that learns her choreography slower than the rest? Have you told her that you see her trying or see her progress? By doing this we aren't building weak humans who can't handle life, we are building young adults who grow to become parents, professionals, and coaches who take our activity to the next level; filled with empathy and compassion. With each new generation we learn a little bit more about coaching. The stories of throwing music stands, water bottles, and name calling sound barbaric and ridiculous in today's world. It's because we now know what was happening was abuse. It's because we are growing and learning as a society. We have more information today. We take from other sports and other coaches and learn. Do you remember how Bobby Knight from IU threw chairs and tantrums and we as the public ate it up, as if that was how you lifted an athlete to their potential? It is now frowned upon because really, who in the hell has ever gotten better out of fear over compassion? When I was in the Navy and attended boot camp, I expected to be yelled and cussed at, because that's what I thought happened. That's not what happened. The military learned that yelling and cussing does not create a better soldier and does nothing for retention. They changed and grew. 

I am not a colossal bitch and never was. I believed it, though. I look back and I wonder how that day influenced my teaching. I wonder how it impacted my self-esteem. I wonder if at any level it impacted my string of bad relationships, especially the one that hit me and the other one that told me I was worthless. When your coach, the person who is supposed to be the believer of you doesn't show that they believe in you, then you will believe the worst. I often wonder what would have happened if that person had ever asked me how I felt about myself as a performer. If they had, they would have found that I was a perfectionist and was very hard on myself, as most world class performers are. 

I sometimes want to call that instructor who called me a bitch and tell them that I can still hear their words in my head. I'm still haunted at times when teaching others and am very aware of how I may be perceived by the kids I coach. There was a time when abuse was celebrated as a means to success. This was before science allowed us to understand the impact of abuse on the human mind and psyche'. We lacked the knowledge of how the brain works. We weren't aware that men and women have different societal influences that create who we are on the inside, thus creating a difference in performers. We didn't know. Now we do and there are no longer excuses for not bettering yourself as a coach.  I don't care if I'm liked by the kids I'm in front of, but I do care if I reach them. I care that my words resonate with them on an internal level. I care that they leave me as better people. I do care that they know I care, even when I  raise my voice for impact.

What will your voice be as you head to your next rehearsal?

A Young Woman's Body Image--A Basic Primer for Guard Instructors

I remember every player-every single one-who wore the Tennessee orange, a shade that our rivals hate, a bold, aggravating color that you can usually find on a roadside crew, "or in a correctional institution," as my friend Wendy Larry jokes. But to us the color is a flag of pride, because it identifies us as Lady Vols and therefore as women of an unmistakable type. Fighters. I remember how many of them fought for a better life for themselves. I just met them halfway.--Pat Summit

It's band camp time. Thousands upon thousands of kids across America are taking to the marching band field for the very first time. Those in the color guard are holding this odd thing called a flag pole. Many are stretching and finding muscles they never knew existed for the first time in their young lives. Others have never taken a dance class...much less been asked to leap, jump, and move across the floor with grace. Most of these kids who make up the color guard are girls. They are young women who just a couple to three years ago got their first period. Their breasts are still developing. Here are some other things you should know and consider, before the first ensemble drop spin is  even attempted.

• In 2008, the CDC reported that 36% of high school girls reported strong and persistent feelings of sadness and hopelessness in the past year. 19% seriously considered suicide, 13% made a suicide plan, and 9% actually tried to kill themselves.
• Female athletes experience concussions differently and take longer to recover
• By the age of 5, children have absorbed a cultural bias against overweight people and females take the brunt of this bias (Musher-Eizenmean, 2003)
• The media is a multi-billion dollar industry aimed at shaming women into being unrealistically thin, unrealistically beautiful and unrealistically super human.
• The CDC reports that approximately 17% of adolescents are overweight or obese and the lower the income, the higher rate of obesity.

Finally...

Did you know that according the the Geena Davis Institute for Women in Media, only 31% of all speaking roles go to women? Only 23% of all films feature a female protagonist. Only 23% of all action films have females speaking in the films and almost all of action films have set the male up as the hero. This is why movies such as the new Ghostbusters and Wonder Woman is so freaking important. This is why the movie Frozen was so groundbreaking. She chose her sister over a man. She was not an evil queen and she empowered herself to use her internal strength. Oh and one more thing. Women highlighted in sports in the movies and on ESPN are less than 4%. Less than 4. Freaking. Percent! Intelligent women who are portrayed strictly for their talent and brain are visually hard to come by on television and in the movies.

Why is this important? Why did I start with it? Because, by the time you get these girls to spin their first drop spin, most of them are dealing with some sort of self-esteem, body image, or inferiority complex that you can never see, they might not even be aware of and it goes back to the beginning of time. We as women have a long history in this world of subjugation that we are just now coming out of. In fact, our right to vote is still less than 100 years old. 

When you coach a female you have a responsibility to them as women. Now this is no different than any youth you may coach. Males are just as important, but for this post we are talking about females, because females make up the majority of all high school color guards in this country. Without any proper data on the pageantry arts, it is probably the single largest sport for girls in the country. I have and many of those I know, have taken immense pride in our activity that we...for the most part...take the girls that many won't, because we take all shapes and sizes. We give them a shot at the 50 yard line solo. 

So here's the problem. When you coach a guard with the pure intent of designing a show and getting a score, then you lose the reason the girls need us the most. When your focus is only on the design of your amazing costume, then you may forget to design to body image. When you put your emphasis on design over proper training and conditioning, then your females lose out on possibly the one opportunity life has given them to pull themselves out of this pit of hell called the objectification of the female body. When your single goal in life is to choreograph equipment phrasing better than Crown...(well first of all good luck with that), then you have made it about you and not them. Here is something else. Teenage girls are not you. They do not have the wrist strength of a man or self esteem of a developed woman of power. How you speak to them and build their sense of self is more important to those girls than your costume design. How you condition them...if you even do...not just builds their strength to achieve your not so good Crown Guard rip off show, but helps them respect the health of the body for life. YOU are building life long habits. You yes you! It is not just that early is on time and on time is late. Their self esteem and health will be with them until the day they die.

Does this mean that we don't push them to be better every day? Absolutely not. Have you ever heard of the sandwich approach? This is a phrase coined by Dr. Robert Smith that states that when we make a correction, we will get better results by commending the effort first, addressing the technical mistake second, and encouraging future progress third. This technique is not just an idea. It is a well researched method of coaching that yields higher results in performance than just yelling. Athletes and performers are waiting for the negative comment, but what makes this method effective, is that most athletes are already beating themselves up for the mistake. They are mad at themselves for not performing up to par, letting the team down, and most importantly letting the coach down. So why beat them up again? A compliment on effort goes a long way to building the trust in themselves to try something new. Remember, if the stats are right and these young women are walking into your program doubting themselves, then basic psychology would naturally dictate that the emphasis on the positive effort is more effective than the negative.

"Oh but Shelba...kids today are so soft. Back in my day our coaches carried pistols and shot our hands off if we dropped." Oh, but reader...keep an open mind to science and psychology and try not to scream, "Get off my lawn to the kids on Halloween."

Here's something else to think about. Women have had their bodies objectified by the media, men, and even other women all of their lives. "You aren't thin enough. You're too athletic. You're too fat. You're hair isn't blonde enough. Your skin isn't soft enough. Look at your body. It's so sexy. Your breasts are so supple. Your ass is so round. Your ass isn't round enough." Think about the messages these girls have been seeing and hearing their entire lives.

"Here little Suzy. Here's your first Barbie Doll. Oh and by the way...don't forget that you will NEVER, EVER look like her."

"Oh look at how beautiful your daughter is dad. You're going to have to lock her in the house until she's thirty." 

The messages are real and they have detrimental impacts. When girls stretch in front of their male staff for the first time in their lives in a second position, with their legs wide open...it matters. When we have them bend over to stretch out in front of the band...it matters. When we put them on the ground to work leg stretches, while their legs are in the air...it matters. When we put them in uniforms that are too tight...it matters. IT MATTERS and there are easy fixes, such as how we ask them to dress in rehearsal. Some girls need more time to anesthetize or get comfortable with the idea of a second position stretch. Some need more time to acclimate to a world where showing skin in a rehearsal setting is common. Also remember, at least one of your girls if not two by statistics, state they have been date raped. Giving an option of rehearsal attire that covers the top parts of the legs around the thigh area helps in the acclimation process. Some of your young women may have never worn a sports bra and need encouragement to wear one, because all women participating in high impact sports should be wearing breast protection. It helps in their becoming comfortable with their growing chest and reduces soreness after practice. Only a woman can truly know this, hence the reason for this blog post. And one more thing...when costuming girls, please think of the large breasted girls. Fashion designers screw this up all the time. Most of us simply are NOT a B cup with a tiny waist.

Finally, I would like you the reader, the coach, the director, the designer who is reading this to consider how you approach punishment in terms of exercise. We need girls in this world to exercise for life. We need them to love exercise as to cut down on a number of diseases such as diabetes, breast cancer, and high blood pressure. Exercise for conditioning and health is a much better approach than exercise for punishment..not to mention that if you yourself are overweight, eating french fries and barking orders from a tower...all you are doing is building a guard that doesn't trust you. Put the fries down and pick up an orange and tell them to do the same damn thing. 

When I coach I have a simple philosophy. It took me years to grow this philosophy. I had to go through the yelling phase, ego phase, and arrogance phase. I'm now in the "leadership" phase. I want to lead them to lead others. I want them to love who they are, because it took me way too long to love myself. Sometimes it takes domestic violence, sexism in the workplace, and being called a bitch, cunt, whore, and tyrant to come to the realization that you are none of those things. I am and you are a strong, powerful, unstoppable, and once in a lifetime woman. My philosophy is to build young women who know who they are faster than I ever did, so finding that man who hits and berates them is not even an option in their lifetime.

Coaching women is an undertaking that if done right can build leaders of our country. Standing in front of them is an awesome responsibility and part of that responsibility is the undoing of generations of women being told they aren't good enough. It is your job to say, "You are good enough. You are a leader. You will make it. I believe in you."

NOTE:

The Marching Roundtable is producing a series of podcasts focused specifically on how to coach young women. They are also putting in place a mentoring program and diversity program. I encourage you to check out their site to sign up here to mentor young women or men, so we can start building coaches, directors, and designers who know the how of the young people and not just the what.

Letting Perfection Become the Enemy of Good

This is a topic that I have struggled with much of my teaching career. I am without a doubt, hands down the picture in the dictionary of a perfectionist. I struggled with it growing up and I have struggled with it as an adult. At my job, at work, as a parent, as a wife, as a friend, and most certainly as a color guard instructor; I have struggled. I use the word "struggle," because being a perfectionist is an internal struggle and it impacts everyone around you. Over the years, I've learned to contain it and harness the feeling of "it's not good enough and that's o.k." There's a balance though, and finding a balance of not good enough vs. it needs more work, is where I have done my most growth as a youth coach.

It's March and the end of the tunnel is within reach and in the sights of all involved, but there's a big job to do and to me, the hardest part of the season is upon us. This is where we as staff members must make some choices. Do we continue down the path we are on and just clean? Do we take out that one scary and not so successful moment? Do we water? This is the time to make choices and the choice is this. What is it that will make the kids feel most successful in the end and what design and cleaning decisions will get you the biggest bang for your buck?

The biggest question is this, however. How do you maintain high expectations, without compromising the original intentions of the program? Additionally, how do you do it without destroying the kids and program in the process? I believe March is what makes or breaks a program and I'm not just talking about the current season. You also have to think about the future in terms of retention and recruitment. I'll be honest with you. There are moments in my past as an instructor that I regret how I responded to bad performances at a show or regional. I let the idea that this one particular moment we had been working on for a week get to me, when that one moment wasn't at the success level of my expectations. As a young instructor and even as an old instructor, the balance in my brain is constantly fighting itself. I watch the guard from the top and have to divorce myself from the drop on the 50 or sabre feature that missed its mark in clarity, and find what's right...while finding what we need to work most on. The clock is ticking and it's ticking fast. This is the time of year we triage. What takes precedence and what part is bleeding the most?

If you don't have a staff to bounce ideas off of after a show, then you have a much harder road ahead of you and I know some of you are out there. Most of us though, have someone on staff we can ask the question, "What did you think?" If you don't ask the tough questions and get the perspective of someone else, then your brain will start to play tricks on you. What you see as a catastrophe, might just be a rough moment. What you see as great, could very well be what is denial. You need to talk to people and you need to ask for additional perspectives. You need to listen to your audio files. Remember, the judges don't always look where you do and they don't know what you worked on the night before. Also remember that the judges want you to be successful. They are not your enemy and only want the best, so listen to them as a trusted consultant. If you are in it alone, then find someone...a trusted parent of the program...a friend...a colleague...and ask them. "What did you think?"

The next question you need to ask is this. "Did we set the right goals and do we need to readjust those goals?" Going forth into March without assessing your goals is foolish. Going forth into March without assessing the minds of the performers and staff is also foolish. Where are the kids at? What will make them successful? How far should I push them? What will break them? Should I try to break them? Should I coddle them?

Let me be clear about something. Sometimes performers need the tough love at this point of the season and it is necessary. Sometimes they need just love. I can't answer the question for you, because this is where being a good coach comes into play. You need to know your kids and play to the place where their minds are at on the journey. Sometimes they get it into their heads that THEY are not good enough and their minds begin to play tricks on them. This is where the drops are tend to come from at this point in the season. This is where we ask ourselves as staff members, "What do I do with the soloist that has everything riding on their shoulders in the opening of the show with the sabre quad and she has now begun to drop it consistently?" I can't say I always know the answer. I get just as perplexed as the rest of you, but what I try to do is think, "What would have worked for me?" I was a perfectionist and I never truly felt good about myself as a performer. I never felt the show was good enough. I missed a hand placement, a count, or God forbid I dropped. When I use to tech in my early years, I missed so many great moments with my programs, because someone missed a hand placement, a count, or God forbid a drop. I missed the smiles or the great recoveries. I missed the energy or the kid in the back who finally caught her flag toss.

So this is my suggestion. Don't let perfection be the enemy of good. Don't! Find the good and assess the problems. Gage the energy of the performers as they come off the floor. Listen to audience reaction. Want to know a trick? After the show and after you have watched the show several times on video AND listened to your audio files; go back and play the video with head phones in your ear, close your eyes, and just listen to the crowd. Are they reacting the way you want? Many times, the audience will tell you what you need to fix.  I watch my video's several times. The following system is the order I do it in.

• Listen to the audio files...take notes
• Watch the video for pure reaction
• Watch the video for cleaning purposes...take notes
• Watch the video for cleaning purposes...take notes
• Watch the video for cleaning purposes...take notes
• Watch the video to see where it is I'm irritated with the design (because well...it isn't a good week until I've made a designer angry at least once)
• Listen for crowd reaction
• Send the video to someone else...listen to feedback without defense
• Make a schedule that goes all the way to championships

It's amazing when you follow my system, that you will start to see more good than not. You will start to see that the show isn't perfect and it never will be. Your show will never be perfect. It won't be perfect at any show, at any time, at any point in the season. This does not mean that you don't keep pushing for the perfect catch and the perfect flag statement. It doesn't mean you don't keep your expectations high. It means that you keep assessing and cleaning and assessing and cleaning, but you never let perfection become the enemy of good. You assess and you clean all the way until the last moment, in the last show at warm up and when it's over, you celebrate the kids, your parents and your staff. You celebrate the good and then you assess for next season, but don't let that drop in the last show of the year, be your enemy that carries your program into summer.

Keep your expectations high and the kids will rise to the challenge. They want to rise to the challenge. When it's all said and done I want you to remember this. They are harder on themselves then you could ever be. As a perfectionist myself, no instructor was ever harder on me than I was on myself and I had some tough ones. I had Ping, David Baker, and Jeff Wroblewski. Great instructors all of them, but none of them were tougher on me than me. Let that guide you through March. 

Social Media and the Marching Arts...What Did We Ever Do Without It?

I've been thinking about this post for a while. We always talk about the activity in terms of era's. We compare shows from ten years ago to now and make judgment calls on which one was more ahead of its time.  We talk about instructors and judges who have left us too early, but left an indelible mark that most will never truly get credit for as the generations move further and further into the future. There are constant debates on how the shows have changed for the better or the worse depending on how you define pageantry. The sheets have changed, the shows have changed, the judges have changed, and all the kids at some point in time grow up, but in my opinion, the most significant change we have seen in the activity is the advent of the technological era and social media. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest have all been infiltrated by this activity rich in creativity and history and just as it exists in all other parts of society, it's the users who are pushing the envelope in new ways, thus pushing the activity to change. 

Pew Research Center states that 95% of all U.S. teens are online daily and 74% of those kids access the internet through a mobile device. They discover new music through sites such as YouTube and Spotify. The radio is so last year. So the reality is that we just have to keep up. The technological future continues to move and we are just lucky to hang on to the coattails. 

We all know that any good business model today cannot exist without the forethought of promotion through social media. If you are not connected to the social elements of the internet, then chances are you won't have a business 5 years from now and the pageantry arts isn't dissimilar in its nature. We have followed the same path that every other industry has followed in terms of the growth of technology and how it is used to better our corner of the world--Email, websites, texting, social media. They are all in use on a daily basis and have completely transformed the way we interact with each other and share ideas in an activity where ideas at one time were only shared through videos sold after the fact and face to face conversations held at shows and board meetings. There was a time when we had conventions. I remember attending the WGI convention in New York and if I remember correctly, was on the same weekend as the Army/Navy game. Staying in the same hotel were the West Point boys in uniform  beaming with youthful football testosterone; sharing space with color guard people who convened to learn that you should not put performers in horizontal stripes. It was an interesting weekend to say the least.

I was thinking the other day how I missed the conventions and the face to face dialog. There was a time when going out to dinner with judges after a local show was common place and much of the real critiques took place over hot wings and cocktails. I remember one bar side critique many, many years ago after circuit championships and before Dayton, when a prominent judge (who wasn’t judging us in Dayton) drew his version of our ending on a cocktail napkin and told us that if we changed it, that we would easily gain a placement or two. The staff discussed it and even fought over it and  low and behold (as my grandmother would say),there we were the Wednesday night before prelims changing the ending; using a cocktail napkin as our drill chart.

Those days however are gone. I have found over the past several years that we’ve become a very “business like,” sort of group. I go back and forth on how I feel about it and to be honest, I still don't know where I stand. Sometimes I think we’ve lost the personal touch, but then there are times I feel we’ve gained nothing but, the personal touch.  I also feel at times that we’ve turned into some sort of reality tv show of over sharing our personal rehearsal stories, because to be honest, I’m not really sure if I care that a guard with a staff I’ve technically never met had 97 kids at auditions and they are all “THE BEST GROUP OF KIDS YOU HAVE EVER, EVER, EVER SEEN IN A GYM AT ONE TIME. OMG HOW WILL YOU CHOOSE THE RIGHT ONES!!” 

Facebook has allowed all of us to connect in ways we’ve never connected before. There was a time when the only thing I really knew about my fellow competitors and the judges putting the numbers down was maybe their history in the activity. Nowadays, we know intimately about the lives of those we compete against. We see each other as human. We know each other's politics. We know where everyone is judging on any given weekend and we know scores before the judges themselves barely know them. One show last year I was judging and as a judge was not privy to the recap even during critique. I found out who won the show through Facebook as critique was ending. Facebook allows us to connect in the off season and we get a glimpse into rehearsals that were once closed to the public. We serve as witness to someone’s basic block and new phrases a person writes in their off time. Facebook has allowed us to peer into the world of our competitors, allowing us to start calling them friend. It has allowed us to see that many of our problems are very, very similar from guard to guard.

The way we judge has even turned technical. For the record, I’m the judge that gets the small little anxiety attack each season when some computer whiz kid creates a new way of inputting numbers or creating recorded dialog. I’m the person the contest staff hates to see coming, because inevitably they know they will have to send some stressed out staff person into the stands to say the phrase, “We can’t hear your dialog” or “Your numbers aren't calculating correctly.” At some point during every show it seems I say they phrase, “Well shit! This thing isn’t working right.” In the end, it’s usually what they call user error. There are judges who use Ipads to take pictures of the guards during long show days to help jog their memory 8 hours later in critique. I knew a judge who saw the same error over and over throughout a show and somewhere in the middle, took her Ipad out and took a pic of a sickled foot to show the instructor the importance of the issue later on in critique. I personally thought it was brilliant.

The way we rehearse is changing. We are using technology to not just video rehearsals, but we can slow down a motion in real time while on the field and show a performer so they may fix their error in the present moment. Last season I was Skyped into a rehearsal from another state and able to give feedback to the staff while I sat in my hotel room drinking a glass of wine. (a brilliant way to consult I might add) There are apps that allow us to experiment with drill, floor colors, uniform changes, and music well before we waste precious time and resources. Guards are setting up Facebook pages to share phrases they practice and get feedback from staff.

I think though, the funniest and most useful yet annoying technological shift has come through texting. What in God’s name did we do in Dayton before we could text each other?

“Where r u at?”

“I’m at the bar girl. Where u?”

“I’m at the arena. About to watch Pride.”

“Awesome. Enjoy. The cocktails went up by a dollar this year!”

"Crap!"

“Pride was good.”

“Cool.”

I mean…what was life like without that crucial dialog? How did we exist before texting each other that we were in the parking lot and will be to warm up in five minutes? How did we find our guards without some text telling us that they were warming up by the big tree near the parking lot on the west side?

The most crucial part of the technological era has come from the under currents of education that has been created. For what we have failed at on the national or local levels, individuals are taking the reins to create dialog in the sharing of information. Older instructors, designers, technicians, and administrators care deeply about the future of the activity and see how in our youth we made mistakes and desperately want to help younger generations avoid those same errors in this post Penn State, post FAMU, social media based litigious era. There are Facebook pages set up for young instructors to post questions that many of us “old folk” had forgotten was even once a concern. There are podcasts, blogs (ahem…), and a crosscurrent of conversation for the need for online classes and instructor certifications. People are talking and maybe, for the first time ever, we are really talking to each other. The dialog is happening in real time and person to person. We are starting for the first time to discuss issues related to the kids such as childhood obesity and its impact on the activity. There are people discussing issues related to females or young males who are gay and the unique problems they face. Recently an instructor posted on Facebook an issue about a performer who he thought might be suicidal. These are real issues and we are finally talking about them. It's no longer just the problem of how to create a good production design, where the only experts are the great designers of our time.

I have been lucky to be a part of many conversations had behind the scenes about the need out there for rich dialog and the desire to leave the activity better than we found it or to give back to something that gave so much to us. The greatest shift without a doubt is the shift to online communication that surprisingly, is putting many of us for the first time ever on the same page. We are able for the first time to get an idea of trends in not just shows, but trends in teaching styles. People are sharing the problems they have in their programs and others are offering solutions. Gone are the days where only a few held the power of communication. We are able to boldly discuss proposals coming out of our national organizations and we have a voice. Does it change anything? Not always. Does it put pressure on those in charge? Absolutely! 

We aren't quite where I would like to see us as an activity in terms of real dialog that creates change and education for the younger generation, but we are closer than we ever have been and I for one am looking forward to the technological future. 

Girls and the Sport of Guard Part 3: Their Health and Weight

The elephant in the room. How are we as an activity going to address the growing obesity and weight problem among youth in America and more specifically, the documented and well researched growing sedentary behavior of teenage girls in America? Do we have a responsibility and if so, what is that responsibility?

Let me start here. I work in the non profit industry on the government side. We have the money and the non profits want the money. I often get asked how a pageantry organization can get their hands on that money and my response is always the same. Stop thinking about funding your program and think about who in your program should be funded. Most guards are made up of girls. Girls have specific issues. Girls are on the high level of funding priorities right now. So what would I do? I would go after the money tied to the obesity epidemic and it's impact on women. Why would I do this? Because, colorguard in most nationally based programs and even most locally competitive programs are physically taxing and require just as much physical strength and endurance as any other sport women participate in. In my last blog post, the second in the series about girls and the sport of guard, I mentioned that we must stop calling ourselves an activity and call ourselves a sport. Calling colorguard a sport brings up images of discipline, fitness, and teamwork. Calling it an activity allows the parents, the kids, and the school to think it's just some run of the mill after school program.

So why the obesity epidemic? Currently in America, when it comes to females, more research is being conducted on physical activity and weight, than almost any other form of research being conducted on the genders and its impact on the future health of the country. It's a huge issue right now. Here are some basic stats from the Women's Sports Foundation Meta-Analysis on girls health released in April 2015:

• Among students in the 9th-12th grades, only 17.1% report being physically active and only 30.3% are getting daily physical education in schools
• Among 12-year old children, girls were found to be less physically active than boys. Puberty increases obesity in girls more than it does boys. 
• A study examining trends in physical activity starting in 1988, demonstrates that the number of adults reporting no leisure-time physical activity increased greatly over two decades and the number is higher for woman than for men. 
• Among children and adolescents aged 2-15, almost 17% of all children are considered obese (CDC)
• 1/3 of all U.S adults are considered obese
• in 2014, there was approximately $147 billion spent on medical costs associated with obesity in the U.S. 

Think about that last number. $147 billion. Long terms studies conducted on health in America show time and time again that if a child learns healthy behaviors in diet and exercise from birth, they are more likely to grow to be healthy adults with less medical problems, less likely to smoke, and less likely to be sedentary leading to diabetes, cancer, and osteoporosis. 

What does this have to do with guard, band, or drum corps? Because, out of that original number of 17% of active high school students, how many of those kids are band and guard kids? This is how we advocate our worth! Think about it. If we talked to the kids about eating healthy and proper exercise, more than just, "Hey...you dropped the toss do push ups," then we are setting our kids up for life. LIFE! Factoring in how many steps are taken in one marching band season, frequent changes in tempo, which changes the heart rate keeping the metabolism always questioning, physical endurance exercises such as running the track, push ups. planks, jumping jacks, and whatever else we make them do, we are most likely one of the most physically active sports in the country. Core strength has become the buzz word in fitness circles all over the world. Your core is the essence behind your posture and building those core muscles has health implication well into middle age. 

What does this have to do with girls? Girls have a higher rate of being overweight once they hit puberty than the boys do. Girls have body image issues that are tied to societal expectations of being thin. Often times when working with girls, you face one of two issues in regards to their bodies. There is the, "I'm so fat." When if fact they are not fat or you get those that are overweight, but fail to see a life of sedentary behaviors and diet as the cause of that. Both work against a guard program. 

So what do we do about it? First we have to recognize that in an activity of teenage girls, that body image is a true issue and it's not a game. We have to next recognize that other sports may or may not monitor weight, but there is an expectation that they come into the program with an understanding that physical fitness will be the cornerstone to the program. Early morning conditioning is often a requirement, as well as control of diet. Soda's, fast food, and sugar are discussed in pre-season meetings and dietitians are often contracted with. We are an activity where the look of the performer is a factor whether we admit to it or not. Many of the girls in the activity join colorguard without an awareness of the physical nature of it. Many come into it over weight and that has inhibited their participation in traditional activities and sports intended for girls, such as cheerleading and volleyball. Many girls enter into their freshmen year of color guard having been sedentary much of their lives. They simply don't have an awareness of what they are getting into. I watch it every year. That look of total surprise when they have to run a mile around the track....just to warm up. It takes four laps to cover a mile around a high school track and many kids can't make it around in under 15 minutes. In traditional sports, running for warm up is just simply an expectation. A conversation and exercises about the core is a necessity and will go a long way in saving you time in the end bitching and complaining about "standing up straight."

Every year at band camp I watch the girls and how they dress for the heat and what they drink. One girl a couple of years ago showed up to band camp with a Mountain Dew in her hands. My response? "Do you understand how your body reacts to the amount of sugar in those drinks and the heat?" She didn't know. I told her to go home and research it and come back and report to the rest of the guard. I finished with, "I don't ever want to see another soda on this field again." These are the things they don't know. Before we teach the first count of a show, we must talk to the kids about their health. We have to go beyond drinking water and wearing sunscreen and talk to them about their bodies. 

What about the overweight girls? How do you discuss what is probably the most sensitive topic for girls today? Start with an expectation upon entering the program that a healthy lifestyle will be a cornerstone to the program. Engage the girls in conversations about what they ate for lunch. Talk about water and how water doesn't just keep your body from dehydrating, but can help boost the metabolism. Create a Facebook page for the guard and on that Facebook page encourage the performers to post how they conditioned their body in their off time. Encourage friendly contests between them regarding to fitness. Talk with them individually if you need to. Ask them how they eat at home and what they eat when they snack. Teach them that almonds are great for a snack, but chips are not. Tell them you are concerned that they will not be able to manage the intense physical demands that the show will bring if they don't take better care of themselves. Show concern and compassion. Tell them when you see them lose weight or gain time in the morning run. Can't do more than 10 push ups at the beginning of the season, but in the end they can do 30? Tell them you are proud of them! Keep the understanding in the back of your mind that if the parents are overweight, chances are they aren't being encouraged at home to be physically healthy. There's a possibility that you will be working against a familial lifestyle. This goes into the next part.

Don't ignore the parents. If parents think that little Suzy is joining a cute little activity, then they will treat it that way. Parent meetings are crucial in laying the foundation of the program from a health perspective. Work with the parents, not against them. Parents only want the best for their children and if you approach it that way, then you will get most of the parents on board. Here are some other ideas:

• Create a county wide initiative with other guards. Friendly competition so to speak. Something like, "How many miles did your guard run this season?" 
• Work collectively as a community pageantry environment and share dollars in bringing in a personal trainer or dietitian before the band season starts and get as many kids in a gym as possible to listen to them speak.
• Get the kids to keep fitness journals. Sports teams do it all the time.
• Create a push up chart or plank chart. How long can the guard collectively plank? What's the average push up before the first person falls? Increase that number as the season goes on. 
• Make every kid in the program buy a pedometer and wear it. It's a physical reminder of the importance of motion.

There's a million ideas that don't require money or a lot of time. It is incumbent upon us as an activity to talk more about health. This physically demanding activity of ours, becomes more rigorous as the years go on and can start resulting in more injuries such as broken wrists, dislocated knees, and concussions as we explore more tricks and blind tosses. We are more than what we spin and we owe it to the kids to create a health based dialog. Finally, what about us? Shouldn't we as instructors and coaches model positive health? We have to ask ourselves, "What do the kids see when they see me and am I an adult that's a do what I say, not what I do?" We don't have to look like the model of health, but we should at the very least strive to better ourselves.  

Girls and the Sport of Guard...Part 2

I'm going to tell you a story. There is a girl in your guard. She's your guard captain. She's strong. Smart. Ambitious. You don't have to worry about her. She has a great, caring family. Her parents are supportive and have done everything in their power to make sure she succeeds in life. Somewhere in her upbringing though, she lost her sense of self. Somewhere along the lines she started to believe that the images she see's in the media of beauty and weight, is real. What if what she saw around her gave her a sense of "less than," because she can't find her ambitions in the images of reality t.v. and the movies. You find out that she has been keeping a secret. That secret is that she dating a boy that isn't nice.  He doesn't support her success in an activity few understand. He hates it when she's at practice. He texts her constantly. He wants to know if there are any other boys she's talking to. He never congratulates her when she wins. He never see's her perform. He convinces her to quit. She believes that he is the best thing she can get, so she does. She tells you that it's because she has too much school work.

What would you do? Would you recognize that she's in an abusive relationship? Do you think her parents know? Does it even matter to you as her coach?

The story you just read is a true story and it's my story, except it didn't happen in high school, but as an adult and I didn't quit, but almost did. This story plays out with teenage girls and women every day and most people have no idea, because we don't talk about it and we keep secrets. It's uncomfortable. It's scary. It's about the power partners keep over us and the self-esteem that society seeks to destroy through the unnatural expectations it has on women regarding beauty and sex. If you read many of my posts, you will see me in them. I veil much of it, but if you read closely, you can see the story of me reveal itself. In my career of color guard, I have endured a hell you wouldn't believe. Strength is my game and strength is a misconception. We place strength on the top of the list of things we want our girls to learn from guard. I know I do. However, sometimes we forget to make sure that strength goes beyond throwing a really great toss. Through a lot of soul searching, I have found that I have had people looking up to me while  I wasn't even look up to myself...and no one knew. Well a few did, but they only started to realize after the game of secrets I was playing started to unravel in front of them, because good friends will always find their way around the secrets. When you don't look up to yourself, you open a door to madness.

When a person is in a relationship that centers around power and control, the control reaches way beyond the home. Your photos on Facebook are monitored. Time frames of coming and going must be kept. Being on the computer late at night becomes a crime. Your whereabouts become about the control of your actions. Lies are told to cover tracks of things that aren't even wrong to do. These were my guard weekends for years. Sunday nights were awful. Awful! I have had my keys taken from me to keep me from leaving for a weekend and had the mileage on my car monitored. I kept it all a secret. Color guard weekends for me were an escape to people who care, but the people who cared were kept in the dark. Why is that? Because I'm supposed to be strong. I've had men who were jealous of my success, so much so, they became verbally abusive just to manage me. Kept it all inside, because coaching young people to be strong does not lend itself well when you are the internal lie of strength.

So what does this have to do with coaching girls? Because, our girls face battles many people fail to recognize and we owe it to them to make sure we do recognize it. Because, a national dialog about who is teaching in our activity and who is performing in it needs to finally begin. The dialog on how we coach must start now. For the record, I know women in the activity (I also know men, but this post if about the girls) who have been hit by a partner. I know single moms who get no child support and who judge on the weekends just to make ends meet. Many women in the activity are techs. Techs get the brunt of the "bad cop" persona.  With that comes the word "Bitch."  In many programs, the techs get little to no pay, while the designers get eat up the bulk of the instructional budget. There are girls performing who are told by opening equipment solo's automatically going to boys, that they aren't good enough. Watch the shows next year. Tell me if you don't see a large number of solo equipment moments going to the males. Many of our girls don't come to us with high self-esteem. In fact, we know that once a girl hits puberty, her self-esteem can drop by almost 50%, to make way for the change in perception of the body. This is why costuming correctly is crucial. This is why we must recognize that building their self-esteem must be an essential aspect of our coaching curriculum. You can be tough, without tearing them down.

We know that when women enter the workforce in male dominated fields that they speak less in meetings and get shut down more than their male counterparts. We also know that women when they do speak up, often times follow with an apology afterwards. This is researched and well documented. Women are a little over half of the U.S. population and earn 60% of all masters degrees awarded. However, they hold just 17% of Fortune 500 Board seats and although women control 80% of domestic spending, they are only 3% of creative directors in advertising. What girls see, is how many of them will be. We can break this, if at the least for our own performers if we are diligent in how we coach them.

Pat Summit of the Tennessee women's basketball program is probably one of the best coaches of all time. 100% of her girls graduated college. 100%! She saw coaching as a means to help girls realize their full potential of self-worth. She's a hero of mine. It's Pat Summit that lived by the Teddy Roosevelt quote of, "They don't care what you know, until they know that you care." She has spoken publicly about the uphill battle women face in life. In her coaching, she positioned her players to manage life head on.


In the past 5 years there have been three crucial moments that put me in a position to see my worth. The first was a class for adults being offered at my sons karate studio. It was cheap and sounded fun. It was called Krav Maga. I had never heard of it. Basically, the premise behind krav maga is to cripple your opponent so you can get away. One night we were learning how to get out of a choke hold from the back. Without thinking I reacted...strongly. One of the things they teach you is to use your voice to call for help, but to give you breath to continue. So I was choked  (by a black belt mind you) and without thinking I turned around and flattened him and put my foot on his chest and screamed, "Get the f*** off of me!" It was a moment that was visceral and raw. It was a lifetime of feeling less than coming out and everyone cheered. The second and third were two movies that I saw almost back to back. They were the Hunger Games and Frozen. I watched Frozen first and was captivated by the message. As much fun that we make of kids and "that song," have you ever listened to the words and thought about the message to girls?

A young girl is told to hide her magic. She keeps it all inside. She hides her true nature of internal power. Finally, the magic breaks free and she feels that she can once and for all explore who she really is. Sound like the teen girls you work with?

"A kingdom of isolation and it looks like I'm the queen." (She's hiding her true self)

"Be the good girl you always have to be." (The old societal message)

"The fears that once controlled me can't get to me at all." (You are more than what frighten's you)

"It's time to see what I can do, to test the limits and break through. No right or wrong no rules for me. I'm free." (Empowerment!)

"You'll never see me cry." (Standing up for yourself)

"Let the storm rage on." (There will always be a storm. How you see yourself in that storm is crucial)

There is a reason why the movie was so powerful and it had nothing to do with Olaf. It empowered a generation of girls and I know women who use the song to get them through hard times and to inspire them. I did. I do. When I finally got to see the Hunger Games I started to see that the tides were shifting in America. Women were starting to once again, be shown as figures that could stand up for themselves and their families. As women we've always done that. Hollywood however, usually paints a much different picture...Sexy, Bitchy, Catty, and Needy. Most people can't be what they can't see, so they play out what they do and we see that in schools all over the country. We have a responsibility to show them what they can be and what they should expect in a partner and a job. There is a reason Pat Summit was so successful. She coached the woman first and basketball second. She was tough. She expected nothing, but excellence. She required discipline on and off the court. She expected that her players presented with a sense of class. The following is what I suggest:

1) We have to stop calling ourselves instructors and calling ourselves coaches.

2) We need to start using the word "sport" in describing what we do. Sport has a connotation that means competition, expectations, discipline, and practice. Stop using the word "activity."

3) We need a certification system. Every sport has something. With that, we need conventions or conferences where dialog goes beyond how to write a good show. We need to discuss what it's like to coach kids today. What do girls face? What do gay boys face? What do straight boys face? What do lesbians face? Why does that matter? We need to discuss the obesity epidemic and how to talk to the kids about their weight. We need to discuss the rising cost of the activity and how it's pushing kids out. We need to discuss dating violence and what to do when we spot it, because we are an activity of teenage girls and dating violence is real. We need to discuss bullying. We need online materials and an expectation that anyone coaching at the national level understand those materials. Every sport...every single sport has something that is required of its coaches and we don't even have the most minimal basics of risk management and youth development.

4) We need to actively recruit and retain young women to become leaders in the sport of the arts. We need to fill circuit boards, national boards, judging panels, and show coordinators with women. We need to show women that they too can design and choreograph. Most national programs are male designers as the lead. There are exceptions, but we have to be honest with ourselves here and look at the big picture.

5) We have to start collecting data. It's the only way you can truly advocate and find gaps in your programming. We don't really know who is performing and who is instructing. This sport is a multi-million dollar, international, multi-faceted sport. If you ran a private business that generated the amount of money the pageantry arts does, you bet your ass you would be collecting data on your users.

How did I, a strong woman, articulate and educated end up in not one, but three abusive relationships? Because no one told me that it could happen to me and the more I climbed the ladder of success in career and guard, the more I hid what was inside. It happens to our girls all the time and it's happening in our programs, right under our noses. Many girls feel their power is diminished and we don't even see it. Many of us don't talk to our performers, but at them. I have. I did. And I regret it.

Finally, we must start telling the real story of the sport of the arts. We are a touchy feely group of people who fear honesty sometimes. The behind the scenes stories are the real ones and those stories are what brings us together. The personal struggle of the lives we lead keep us coming back to the safe environment of the gym and football field. We just have to make sure that we are looking out for each other and that the kids are being coached to be the best future selves they can possibly be.



I'll never teach counts again. Those counts will be coached. What we are inside is who we present to the kids. Our ego's and fears come across in our body language and tone of voice. We owe it to them to explore our own worth and then help the young people explore theirs.



As for me...

It's time to see what I can do, to test the limits and break through. No right or wrong no rules for me. I'm free. I'm never going back. The past is in the past.

The cold never bothered me anyway.

Girls and the Sport of Guard

Somewhere about 5 years ago I made a decision that my role as a guard instructor would change. I decided to focus less on teaching the counts and more on coaching the team and specifically the girls. In my own work, I've been lucky to be able to focus on what those of us in social services call "gender specific programming." Through this work of research and then pairing it with my knowledge of youth development, I started to realize that my work in an activity of primarily teenage girls, must take on a larger role than just 5,6,7,8. Don't get me wrong, 5,6,7,8 is important, but the way I went about it would change forever.

In my research, I was asked to look at how the media portrays women as sexual objects. For the most part, women are either presented as needy and weak or bitchy and powerful. Statistics tell a story where women during the NCAA Tournament receive only 2% of the air time to men and the same holds true for World Cup Soccer.  When women are presented in sports, it's as a cheerleader or sideline model on the field at the football game. In a review of movies and films, only 23.3% of the time will a female drive the plot. The Hunger Games is an anomaly. The book was called, Harry Potter, not Hermione Granger. Articulate, strength based television characters where a woman speaks her mind, stands up for herself, is career oriented and NOT crazy are few and far between. When reality t.v. entered the scene, we lost sight of characters such as Julia Sugarbaker, Maude, and Roseanne. All shows that specifically dealt with issues related to women.

So why do I bring this up? Once I started looking at the research and tying it to the issues we are seeing with teens in the schools such as bullying, I started to see it in my own colorguard kids. Regular, everyday middle class girls that the radar tends to miss, were dressing provocatively, engaging in relational aggression, and dumbing down their own intelligence. In one crucial rehearsal five years ago, I watched a seemingly strong high school girl get yelled at by me in rehearsal. She started to cry and then on a break walked over to her boyfriend and pouted, while he put his arms around her and "made it all better." I watched all of this. My inside voice screamed, "WTF!" My outside voice said, "You are not a toddler who needs her boo boo's kissed. Get back over here!" That's when I decided what was important to me, which was to build up the girls to stand on their own and to rescue themselves through hard work and discipline.

This past winter season as Paradigm was finishing its final rehearsal before leaving for Dayton, in a fit of blind rage, I had a moment that I'm sure will become a top 5 iconic Paradigm moment of all time. You see, when you teach a guard that is gender mixed, many of the girls tend to do what's called, "giving their power away." The boys are naturally stronger in the wrist and upper body. It's often easier for them to get through work that is often times, if not most of the time written by a grown man. So, in this one rehearsal, I wanted a particular count to move aggressively across the body. We did it over and over and over and over. The boys had no issues. The girls? Well, I can only describe it as "mousy." So out of the stands I went. Went to the floor and took the flag out of one of the girls hands and said, "If I was a woman...WHICH I AM...I would take this flag and take my body and attack the count AGGRESSIVELY! I would stop giving away my power and I would stand up and say I will not live in a world where I am second!" Now somewhere in that speech where I blacked out I'm sure, I was told I mentioned something about them accepting minimum wage and just trying to be rescued by a prince on a white horse. I'm not sure why all of it came out, but you know what? They hit the damn count...AGGRESSIVELY! You know what it showed? That it's in their mind and that many of them have been conditioned to believe what society tells them. Some of them see themselves as weaker and less than. I've seen it. I've talked with them about it.

One of the things I've started doing when working with girls is asking them what other competitive activities they have participated in besides the pageantry arts. Many of them who have been competing in something since elementary school, come to competitive color guard with thicker skin as do their parents. It's just opinion, but I bet I'm right that girls who play hard when they are young, grow to be girls of the color guard world that are tough as nails.

I watched my son play baseball the other day. Balls being thrown at his head, diving to base, and getting dirty. He also takes karate. Since the age of 5 when he started both activities, he has been expected to survive in a competitive and disciplined world. We know through research from the Aspen Institute that girls start competitive sports a full year after boys, if they start competitive sports at all. Participation in girls participating in soccer and softball is on the rise, but girls drop out at a much higher rate once they reach middle school than boys do. Once children reach middle school, participation in competitive sports drops by a little over 60% and for girls it's 75%, because of the push for competitive school teams, and a number of cultural and societal factors. This is why co-ed intramural activities is crucial. So, without any legitimate, peer reviewed research at all having ever been done on color guard, my hypothesis is that by the time the girls reach high school, many of them have either never participated at any length in competitive activities or were pushed out in middle school. When the girls leave the sports behind and interaction in media takes over, where they are told they are either weak or bitchy and must be beautiful, then this is what we get by the time they reach high school. Now, before every one reading this says that "the girls in their guard are not like that," remember that we are talking about a nation of girls and not just one gym full. I also ask that you look at your entire guard and not just the veterans.

My guess is that the winter guard activity is made up of approximately 90-95% performing female members and the head positions of design and choreography is 90-95% male. This is purely guess as we don't collect data, but observation from years of teaching and judging. The head of the activity is male. Most judges on a panel of 5 are male. Most women are techs. Does it matter? I don't know, but what I do know is that we need strong women in front of our girls to guide them and tell them that it's o.k. to be assertive and to take your place in the world. We always say that it's in competitive activities where children learn how to manage the struggles of day to day life. I think women of the activity have a responsibility to the young women coming up in the activity to expect independent thinkers, strength of spirit, and the courage to stand up for themselves. We should talk with them about their self-esteem. They live in a world where they are expected to be beautiful first and smart second and where an equal wage is still not equal. We should talk to them about moving through space with a sense of purpose, because rape is real. We should discuss what it's like to be classy in dress and speak and expect the same of a partner. When I left drum corps I was strong willed, but my self-esteem was in the toilet. I never thought I was pretty and that played in how I attracted men. When you attract men who feed that societal image of beauty, then you attract not so nice men. I spoke to a friend this year in Dayton who just got out of an abusive marriage. How can an articulate woman be in a marriage like that? She said it was because she never really saw her worth. I've been thinking about her since Dayton.

I write this today, because as we start another marching band season it's crucial that we coach first and teach the counts second. Remember that most of us, for the most part, are responsible for teaching girls. Girls who care about how they are costumed and care about boys and care about their body image. They care about college and careers. We have a responsibility to make sure they leave us better women and women who are capable of taking their place in the world with strength and resilience. I leave you with the quote I tell all girls I coach. "Don't come in here expecting that a prince on a white horse will rescue you. This is not Disney, you are not Cinderella, and I am not a fairy godmother. Take your place on the stage. "

In a New York Minute

In a New York minute
Everything can change
In a New York minute
Things can get pretty strange
In a New York minute
Everything can change
In a New York minute

Throughout my life in the winter guard activity, I have always wanted to design a show around the Don Henley song, "New York Minute." I've proposed it to just about every designer I've ever worked with and none of them will bite. They just look at me like I'm high or something and give me reason like tempo this or rhythm that. They humor me and say, "Well I'll think about it." Yeah...ok...whatever. In my mind, the show looks at the turning of life on a dime. When I hear the song I see the image of a woman hunched over a glass of bourbon in a dingy bar covered in thick smoke from a lit cigarette, and with bags under her eyes; similar to the infamous Joni Mitchell album cover. How do you capture that concept of on a gym floor and in five minutes? How do you convey that feeling of complete shock and the disabling of time that occurs in the instant that fate takes a hand, placing you on a path never considered or thought of? Maybe the no's have less to do with tempo and meter and more to do with the challenges of my questions. 


This past weekend, the USF Winter Guard was involved in an incident resulting in a bus fire, while participating in the WGI Atlanta Regional. I am not involved with this program, nor do I know the details, but whenever I hear about an event that involves a pageantry unit while travelling, the hair on the back of my neck stands up and a knot the size of a grapefruit forms in the pit of my stomach. On the outside and from what we were told, everyone managed to escape unharmed, barring the exception of the loss of property. I was judging in Orlando on Saturday when announcement after announcement was made describing the incident and asking for financial support from the audience. It's interesting, because I've heard that announcement before. In fact, I've heard it more than once and could almost recite it by myself and without thought. If you follow this blog you know that every so often the incident of McGavock High School, enters into my thoughts. I've written about it multiple times and the article I wrote  two years ago on the 25th anniversary of the tragedy, received over 10,000 hits. On a cold Sunday afternoon after a WGI regional, fate changed the lives of kids, instructors, parents, a school, and a community forever. In a New York minute everything had changed. Everything! 

If you stay in the activity long enough, it's inevitable that one day you will be trolling social media when you read the announcement. "Guard involved in accident." It also could be a band or a drum corps. Sometimes it's a dance team or baseball team. Regardless of the activity, the end result puts it all in perspective and that perspective allows us to see that the activity comes second to the lives in our charge. It's coming up on March 13th and it doesn't matter how much time has passed. I am forever tethered to that date, like an astronaut tied to the shuttle while floating in space waiting to be pulled back in. Unfortunately, our story isn't unique. When youth teams travel, the ultimate result is that the odds are not always in their favor. Marching bands coming home from a late night contest. Drum Corps travelling thousands of miles in one summer. Winter guards taking vans to the local show just an hour away. Judges who work all day, drive home with tired eyes and mental exhaustion. There are times when we have released kids to go home after a long rehearsal day or show and they don't make it there. Many years ago, a local band lost several of its members when a carload of kids left a football game and as many kids do, didn't go directly home and some in that car never saw home again. 

Too many times we drive when tired under the mission of "we have to get there by noon." If there was a medal for the most stupid guard person in the activity for driving when tired, I rank somewhere in a finalist position. Mental exhaustion, physical exhaustion, stress, alcohol, and anxiety all play a factor in our weekends and that combination can be deadly. Just two weeks ago I judged a fairly lengthy show and was offered a hotel room by the circuit, but really just wanted to get home. It was only 2 hours away. The show ends at 10. Piece of cake. Ummmm....Yeah no. Somewhere about an hour into the drive, my car drifted into the medium and with absolute brilliance I did what most of us do. I kept driving. 

The reality is that many, if not most tragedies can't be helped. Shit happens. We exist in an activity where travel is inevitable and necessary. The programs are underfunded forcing them to cut corners where they can. They hire not so reputable bus companies, if they hire one at all. Some rent vans and have volunteers drive. Sometimes the kids drive themselves to the show. It's reality. 

I get highly frustrated with the pageantry arts and can't for the life of me understand why we as an activity don't discuss safety nearly as much as we discuss the in's and out's of designing a good show. In most sports, coaches and volunteers must take a minimum amount of hours on the topic of risk. These topics range anywhere from how to maintain good boundaries with minors, to the protection against concussions, and how to maintain a safe environment while travelling. If we do this, will it change our behaviors? Will it help the fact that we still don't have enough money to hire a reputable bus company? What about our stupidity of travel while exhausted? Will it save the life of the kids who get into a car after practice and make stupid choices to text and drive? The answer to that question is easy. We don't know. We will never know if it helps until we open up the dialog. I work in social services and have my entire life. There isn't a conversation that is had, that at some point doesn't flow back to risk. We assess risk at every turn. We learn how to calculate risk to determine if what we are proposing is worth exposing ourselves to the liability. This weekend while judging, I pulled into the show site and there were 6 kids directing traffic into the school, without the presence of an adult. Minor risk? Sure. Chances are no one will get hurt. Smart? I beg to differ. 

It was March 13th and in a New York minute everything changed. Time would teach me that death is relentless and doesn't care how old you are or how much money you have. It was March 13th that taught me that fate will stop you when it chooses and force you to look at yourself in the mirror and ask why. The song says that the wolf is always at the door, so you better hang on tooth and nail to the people that you love. There has never been a truer statement. There were no more performances. No more rehearsals. Nothing the staff could have done would have changed the events of that day. There is no blame to place and no one to sue. There are lessons, though. Lessons that say all passengers should be in a seat belt. There is the lesson that 15 passenger vans are awkwardly weighted. A band program that lost members of it's ensemble might tell you that having better communication with parents might save lives. A discussion by the band director that says, "We care about you. Wear your seat belts and don't text each other," might just keep the kids alive. If you are a parent, you are trusting  the band staff with not just your children, but your very soul. When it is all said and done, there is nothing that can compare to the grief of a parent who has lost a child. It is incumbent upon us to have these discussions. 

"In these days when darkness falls early and people rush home to the ones they love, you better take a fool's advice and take care of your own, because one day they're here; the next day they're gone." 

I know some things just can't be changed, but if we were truly looking out for each other, we would talk more about the lives in our care during these weekends of competition and rehearsal. Before someone gets into a car to drive after a long weekend of teaching and judging, we would ask if they are o.k.to drive. If we lived up to our words when we use the word "family" when describing our guard friends, by working harder to ensure the safety of all was not an afterthought, but the first thought we have when planning a season, weekend, or show. We would have more dialog with young instructors on safety. We would ensure safety is the number one goal, ahead of winning and medals. A good risk manager will tell you that sometimes there is nothing you can do to stop a tragedy, but they will also tell you that leaving risk completely up to fate is simply irresponsible. Enter lawsuits. 

March 13th no longer defines me like it did for so many years. I rarely even think about it anymore. It did change me though, as does every event in life that stops you on a dime. My hope is that we learn from each other and don't fear the conversations, as we have so many times in the past and more than anything, I hope we never hear about performers caught in the throws of fate. 

The Indelible Force of Fear

Fear. FEAR! Fear. Fear. Fear. Fear. 

It comes in all shapes and sizes. It comes in different colors, fonts, and styles. It is around us and here to stay. The quote on the left was sent to me by a friend, Nikki Booth. She asked me to write about it, because that's what we do in the pageantry arts and as I really think it through, it probably ranks at the top of the skills we learn and pass on to the performers we teach. 

The quote is very timely for me and I find it ironic that Nikki tagged me in it on Facebook. Last week I got the opportunity of a lifetime when I spoke at the National Bullying Conference in Orlando. Speaking at national conferences isn't new, for me as I have spoken at several before, and I have spoken at the National Bullying Conference once before. Speaking at conferences requires guts, because you risk your reputation while speaking in front of a national crowd. You don't know who is in the audience and you have no idea what their background is. This conference however was even more frightening, because I spoke on a topic that is often unique, controversial, and requested a call to action at the end. Advocacy at this level requires guts of immeasurable quantity and the ability to accept the naysayers, negative Nancy's, and pessimists who live a life of "it can't be done." In the end, the speech went well and my co-presenter Heather Rothman (another pageantry princess)  and I celebrated with a strong cocktail in the local pub. 

None of this however, would have been possible without the help of the pageantry arts. I've written about this before. The power behind the ability to perform in front of a crowd and to be judged takes nothing short of a miracle sometimes. We teach young people everyday in rehearsal that overcoming fear is probably the most important life skill a person can have. I've been teaching for over 25 years in this activity and the challenge of overcoming fear doesn't stop when the sabre is tucked quietly away in the closet with old dance shoes and medals. I believe the fear that comes from creating a product and presenting it to be judged, criticized, ridiculed, mocked, and placed value upon, is harder than performing ever could be. Even as I write this little blog post, I can't help but wonder how it will be received. In the pageantry arts we don't just compete. We create performance art and ask young people to step onto a stage to have others form an opinion of that art. With all of my years in the activity, it's been just in the past decade or so, that we have begun to call ourselves artists and with that title, comes creative fear. 

Years ago, when people would congratulate me on a job well done with a guard or ask what I did for a guard, I usually responded with some self-deprecating remark like, "Oh it' was nothing. It took a team. Yeah thanks." or my personal favorite, "I'm just the tech." It's not always easy, even when the art is good, to appreciate your own work and sense of value in the world of performance art. It's easier to judge yourself harder than the audience and put yourself down, because fear tells us that if we step up and say, "Hell yeah we were good!" or "I might not have designed that, but by God we couldn't have done it without the creative flow of a great technician," then we don't have to take full responsibility for the good and the bad. I have found that being humble is my defense against the fear of seeing myself as talented and good. Sometimes I put myself down, because fear tells me that success might not come again, so don't get use to it. As a woman in America, I've been subjected to the hidden messages that being bold and assertive was unbecoming of a lady. So, when you couple absurd gender based societal messages with fear; you get a person who hides behind a curtain of insecurity. 

In critique, I see instructors coming to the table unable to have an open dialog, because of fear that we as judges might actually say the words, "I really liked it." 

Instructors often start a conversation with, "Yeah it wasn't our best run." 

                                                             or 

"We were missing Sally Mae who had mono all week and well you know kids and their parents, so Betty Sue who is Sally Mae's exchange partner freaked out and missed count 5 after the exchange and forgot to toss, because well...I think she has mono, too."

"Time!"

Yeah, you just blew your three minutes by excuses, when all I wanted to say was, "I noticed that you had a hole during the exchange, but I really like where the show is going." 

It's fear. Fear allows us to make excuses and it keeps us from hearing the good and suggestions for growth. I see this not just out of young artists in the activity, but out of the most prominent designers and techs. I personally do it all the time. I do it at work. I do it as a mother. I do it as a writer. I do it as a judge and I most certainly do it as an instructor. 

Living the life of a creative person is a rough life and it doesn't matter what field those creative juices flow in. Opening your mouth, your heart, or soul to express a new idea just once, is more than most people do in an entire lifetime. In the pageantry arts, we do it every year day in and day out. I've been working in the field of social services since I was 23 and I can't tell you how many times I've begged colleagues to think differently. I'll ask the question, "So, if the statistics on bullying haven't changed, so then clearly the status quo isn't working. Give me a new solution. Give me something different." And in light of the lack of a creative response, I open my mouth, with the fear of ridicule and say, "I have a new idea. It's different and may not work."  I've learned over time that those that fear change or new concepts, will be the first to pick apart and blow holes through the idea. The truly creative people, the people that look fear in the face and say, "Screw You," will attempt to find the good in the new, before finding the bad. 

Fear. It isn't for the faint of heart and those who fear for the sake of fear, lead a life of comfort. They don't take chances and roll over into apathy. 

I thank God for the failures of the staff that taught me and the failures of my own creative process. They made me stronger and even more creative. They taught me how to stand up for myself and in front of a crowd to defend my ideas...the good ones and the bad ones. 

Last Thursday, when I spoke of new ideas in front of a national crowd, I had McGavock High School, the Star of Indiana and the Pride of Cincinnati to thank. Through them and every judge that told me I could do more, I stood with good posture, made eye contact, and opened my mouth to a different future. 

We are a wondrous activity.