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I can't stand these. They're too light! stare

Completely. I know it'f not as drastic for my exchange (13 lbs, o.O) but I lost my parallel planes when I go lighter. And I generally feel I lose my quality of execution... and... catching. xd

My high school used 7-ft poles. (well, except for Beth, who isn't even 5ft. She gets a 5.5-fter). We had those really great $200 King Sabres (You know, for how tough they look, they're surprisingly easy to break. Our guard broke 3 in 2 years crying ), but the guard got bigger this year and the new sabres are cheap imitation-Kings that bend very easily.

We have your basic white guard rifle, some new and some old, but they were all repainted and retaped last year to make them presentable. And they don't all have the same weight either, so we have to be careful that we can use the one we pick up.

We have swing flags, they are blue and white and silver, but mostly white. They need a really good cleaning, which is planned for this year. We are supposed to use them for our third half-time piece, but I don't know if we'll get that far.

We also have our big flags, we like our silver poles best because the white ones splinter. We had some new flags made this year by one of the guard's brothers, they are blue sparkly. Our BD found the fabric when cleaning, there was tons of it, it was forgotten, we were using it. These flags have virtually no resistance, it's like tossing nothing.

And, of course, we have our brick flags. They are pieces of bright red fabric which we sewed handles and weight s to, and painted in a brick pattern. At the beginning of brick house, we fake out the audience by wearing them around our waists and just grooving. Then we take them off and twirl them. This is our own little awesomeness; during the first few band practices, before the band could play the song, we sewed, painted, and made these flags, then played with them until we could find stuff to do with them. Another advantage is that they arent' bulky, and we don't have to take a guard bag until we get our second piece.

i found the afore mentioned "room" a couple weeks ago.....

its this huge-a** closet.....think wardrobe from the narnia movie, but not as fancy.

tons of boxes with flag silks spilling out all over the place.....homan. it is amazing.

like.

extremely amazing.

i was all like "OH MY GOD! SO PRETTY!"

one day, i'm going to find use for the tiger's eye flag......**shiver**

We just got brand new sabres blaugh They're King sabres and I absolutely love them heart domokun ! The only equipment we get to keep are things they're going to throw away anyways, and we're allowed to buy our old things that they (the directors) say we won't use for a show or as practice silks again. We get new rifles and sabres depending mainly on how many people we have. We use 6' poles for our regular flags and 4' for swing flags. It was pretty cool this year because we got a set of new gold poles (usually I don't like the gold, but they looked awesome with the silks they were with). We sell or lend much of our props and silks to other schools, so they get used and not just thrown away. As far as light vs. heavy equipment goes, I like heavy when I'm just learning something because I can feel the weight easily, and I like light for equipment I'm familiar with so that I can toss higher and focus on my technique more.

We got some new sabres that looked really nice at first, but when you droped them they bent up pretty bad.