Informative Speech On Color Guard

Speech #2: Informative Speech
Attention Statement: How many of you have seen or heard of the Disney movie, “Cadet Kelly?” For those of you that have not seen the movie, there’s girl named Kelly that goes off to military school, and while she’s there she develops an interest in drill team, which in the movie, involves a group of people doing various marching drills and spinning rifles. During high school, I was a part of something similar but a little less militaristic, and a little bit more artistic, called color guard.
Introduction: Today I am going give you all an overview of color guard by talking about the background behind color guard, color guard within marching band, and winter guard.
Body:
The background behind color guard
According to the Winter Guard Association

of Southern California website, “color guard originates from early days during the Civil War within the military.”
And the United States Special Commands website also states that “ A band would accompany the soldiers to play music to keep their spirits up and to keep them in beat.

Along with the band, they also had a soldier holding a flag with their colors on it.”
Winter guard International defines modern, performing arts color guard as “[the] combination of the use of flags, sabers, mock rifles, and other equipment, as well as dance and other interpretive movement.”
Color guard is taking each of these components and creating a competition piece/performance with theme.
B. Color Guard within Marching Band
Both Bands of America and the Western Band Association define color guard within a marching band as, “[the] non-musical section that provides the visual aspect of the performance.”
Basically, color guard members are the people that show a visual interpretation of the music the band is playing with their flags, sabres, rifles, and movement. From my personal experience, their costumes also play a role in helping the show come to life.
Also from my experience, these performances take place on football fields in various venues such as high school and college football stadiums.
15 sec. video of from

“Nexus”
When all these components of music, dance, and spinning of equipment come together, it looks a little something like this.
Very small sample from my senior year in color guard showing how band and guard work together within a show
C. Winter Guard
Winter Guard International and Winterguard Association of Southern California defines winter guard on their website as “the sport of indoor color guard.”
From my personal experience, winter guard color guard is very similar to marching band color guard in the sense of you are using the same equpiment. However, winter guard is done separately from band so the music is not live but instead, a recorded track is used.
A few other differences between marching band color guard and winter guard include that in winter guard, guards use painted floors in their show, there are no outside weather issues that could affect equipment being spun, so more tricks can done, and I feel, is more personal, especially since it does take place indoors, closer to audiences.
Since winter guard is an indoor activity, competitions usually take place within high school and college gyms and arenas.
One of the bigger competitions that happens e is Winter Guard International World Championships, which from my experience, takes place in the University of Dayton Arena in Dayton, Ohio which, according to the Winterguard International website, involves hundreds of the top color guards from throughout the world.
15 sec. clip from “Before I Die”
IV. Conclusion: Today, I have given you an insight of what color guard is by talking about the background of guard, colorguard with marching band, and winter guard.
V. Residual Statement: Now that I have shared with you all about color guard, you will be able to recognize both the military one and performing arts one when you see one.
- Advertise