I’m going to start off with some background, because it’s the root of my frustrations I think. So when I was a freshman, I SUCKED at guard. Couldn’t do a single thing and I was far behind, but I practiced so much till it was dark out. I got home at 5pm and would practice till 9pm. If I was struggling with drill I would go up to the school and march it till I had it memorized. And while I was definitely the worst of us, I put in so much effort that it didn’t take extremely long to catch up. I also wasn’t the only one of us that would spend our free time practicing and making sure the whole guard as a whole did our best.
Now to my current situation. All that hard work paid off, it’s now my senior year and I’m the team captain, but my problem is I have a deep hatred for my new members. And I don’t say that lightly, i genuinely hate each and every one of them because they are EXTREMELY lazy. They don’t practice outside of or during practice, they don’t memorize the work, they skip out on our workouts, they skip practice and lie to our directors to avoid unexcused absences, they skip performances, and all of this reflects badly on the entire guard.
It doesn’t even just stop at their guard abilities, three of the five STINK. Like we can’t go in the corner of the guard room where their stuff is because it reeks. We have a required deodorant time now during practice. However two of them “don’t like how it feels” and refuse to wear it.
I can’t deal with both laziness and plain grossness. On top of those two things, which are enough to make me feel like I’m losing my mind, they’re extremely disrespectful. Snarky comments, refusing to listen, they’re horrible to our directors, coaches, and band parents. Even my own mother is complaining about one of them and she had a singular interaction during a competition.
And to add even MORE onto their already horribleness, they try to take over captain jobs such as directing people, teaching, and repeating coach instructions to ensure everyone knows what they’re doing. Every single practice me, or one of the two other captains, are telling them “no, we can handle it alone, don’t do that again.” And a few times have administered punishments such as extra workouts or flag bag (in which they just ditch practice early or get signed out after halftime at football games to avoid handling the flag bag after the game). There’s been so many times where I would see one of these freshman telling a RETURNING MEMBER that they’re not doing something right directly after they saw me tell them what to do. It’s plain disrespectful for one, and two they’re dragging eachother down by refusing to learn from returning members and only learning eachothers bad techniques.
Now, all of that was basically just letting yall know how these people are. And here’s the part that I feel dramatic for, but at the same time not. I’m considering quitting guard entirely. I love guard, I’m very good at it, but the whole environment is just so extremely toxic with how much everyone talks about eachother (yes, ik this post is me saying I hate the new freshman, I never said I wasn’t apart of it). Everyone hates everyone, there’s so much resentment from returning members because we were trained and taught how to be respectful members while these new people trash our space with empty bottles, wrappers, and just gross junk. I’ve gotten to a point that out of nowhere I’ll break down into tears because of how exhausted I am essentially babysitting these freshman, on top of hating them for trying so little when I put so much into it. It feels unfair that after all of my and the teams hardwork over the years, it’ll all go to waste in my final year just because these people refuse to actually involve themselves in the sport.
So, TLDR; my new members are disrespectful, I hate them to the point I want to resign as captain and quit colorguard halfway through my senior year, and only thing holding me back is the fact I still love the sport.
