My experience marching with an independent guard.
Didn't really think I'd be writing this, but my overall experience was definitely an interesting one so I thought I'd document it somewhere where people might find it interesting lol. I joined InMotion winter 2015 and to be quite frank I was complete and utter trash. Honestly I was probably the worst person there because of how rusty I was, but the nice thing about Buchanan (our director) is that he sees potential in everyone that walks through the gym doors and believes they all have a chance. Long story short for this year, I improved in all aspects of guard (especially dance) and we ended up being independent A silver class medalists. I personally never decided to march again to medal, I honestly just did it to do it again and also to compete in Ohio - so I crossed everything off of my bucket list there. Also we got ripped off by one of the judges who was biased af but thankfully wgi made a new executive rule about that kind of stuff once the season was over. 2015-2016 was honestly a dream come true. Also for our show makeup we had to conceal our eyebrows and I'm honestly still a little hurt about that LOL This most recent winter season, however, was definitely much more interesting. Because we medaled we automatically got bumped up to open class and so we had to work much harder and come up with a show that was both good enough and safe for our class. This season was weird because we spent so much time trying to perfect the design of the show (mostly drill and choreo) that it caught up to us and by our second official competition we barely even had a flag feature, let alone our ending dance feature together. Also because we had so much to choreograph due to the fact that our show song was the length of a freaking world class show that our instructors made a lot of work up on the spot, which also ended up catching up to us because we could've been doing work of high difficulty (which would equal high vocab points) and other cool things of the sort. I wasn't really sure how this season was going to go until we got first at the western power regional, which had us seeded in second for world champs.. and then we ended up being independent open class silver medalists. To be real though our semifinals run was garbage lolol. I'm really surprised we medaled again, InMo hasn't done something like this since '05 and '06 but regardless I'm thankful and proud of my team (even tho some of them were dramatic af) This year I was able to cross things off of my list that I had no idea I would ever be doing in my life such as competing in the Dayton arena, walking through the tunnel (which was a PAIN to back up on), and miss the famous wall before going on that probably has trillions of bacteria chillin on it (it's all for show fam) but it was all yet another dream come true. Having competed in 2 out of the 3 classes in WGI, it's interesting to see how differently things are played out in each class. Independent A has it rough because wgi literally just tosses them to the side, having them compete in sad convention centers that literally have ONE set of metal bleachers (aka our prelims run in 2015). They also schedule them at the same time as open and world class and so obviously the people wanna watch the higher ups so literally nobody goes to watch A class. There's literally a picture on Facebook from independent A semis and there were less than 100 people in the audience. Can you imagine how much that sucks. I honestly don't know if anybody that I marched with noticed this but it's really trashy. Another thing, wgi is also trashy because it's ALL POLITICS. Especially in world class (don't even get anybody started on that). From even the beginning of the season it's pretty much already predetermined who's going to medal, mostly for world. But then when world champs come around it's literally every last man for himself until the judges pick their biases and imbue gets fourth when they should've gotten bronze (I could honestly make a whole other post on this crap.) ANYWAY. Overall, I don't regret spinning again whatsoever however I'm officially done. I'm not sure my body can take another season and spinning while working AND going to school full time sucked the soul outta me. I was also treated extremely unfair many times throughout this season and so I think it's best that I step waaaaaay way back before I say things don't nobody wanna hear lmao. But again, I really don't regret any of it and every single moment of it was well worth it. I even got to spin and medal with my honey so really, what more could I ask for ;)
