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Northwest HS (Region 2, 6A-J) is now searching for a new head director. Job has been posted to TMEA. In addition, the position for Medina Valley Creek View (Region 11, 4A-E) has been taken off the TMEA website. No official announcements have been made by either district at this time.

The wording of D9 is certainly interesting. Some have mentioned the poor percussion judging last year, but that doesn't really explain why it singles out non-Texas educators. Is the assumption that Texas educators wouldn't make the same mistakes? If so, I find that assumption questionable. I don't remember who brought it up. There was some chatter about the shift in music performance scoring going from the old group of judges (retired Texas band directors) to the newer one (DCI/BOA/WGI). Perhaps that's part of it. I've always assumed that the shift was done to minimize the influence of in-state connections and bring in judges who work at the highest level of the marching arts and have very extensive experience in their captions. I don't see that as a bad thing, personally. I suppose the real question is, what does Texas teaching experience confer upon judges that is advantageous, specifically?

I'm not sure how long ago it changed, but Austin area groups like Cedar Park used to be in the same marching and TMEA areas as the North Houston bands. Heck, there was even that brief period where Coppell and Duncanville were in the same area for TMEA as the Spring ISD and Conroe ISD and Klein ISD schools. It seems crazy, but it HAS happened before!

I found close-up videos of Origins Open and Nova. They're both really pushing the upper limit of the Open class in individual skills. We'll see what happens. I like Nova's soundtrack a lot more than Origins'. Not a big fan of pop ballads. But Origins was a lot cleaner, on some pretty crazy skills. Did Nova form in response to the loss of Mirage and Menage? I kind of get that impression. They're VERY talented.

I can't find it. I did, however, stumble onto Tarpon Springs! https://youtu.be/oifc1DV93LQ?si=E350YSG9EwnCpi3G They're very, very good. Not clean yet, but when they get there, I could see them medaling. It's a very different show from their recent offerings. More abstract, serious, less of their typical crowd-pleaser style. I bet all the frames and cubes and whatnot look really cool from higher up. Song sounds like it's from a musical maybe. The only thing is that it's pitched at a very similar intensity from start to finish. Judges might go for something a little more varied and dynamic. That one guard guy is an ace for sure. Holy cow!

There is a video of Little Elm on Youtube of their run and it is impressive. Not shocking to see them win over Flower Mound.

So what was the issue did we ever find out....?

I'm confused about the logic on a football front too. I looked around some of the big Texas football forums but nobody seems to be mentioning what I believe to be a very odd move. Most of the focus is on the Westlake / Lake Travis split, which make sense but still.

The scores here actually look pretty similar to last year's, which is a good thing, because there were a couple Dayton medalists here last year. Wylie didn't quite reach the heights Emerson did, but they're on par with Melissa, who placed 2nd at Dayton. This will be no surprise to anyone here. We all know what the Wylie guard looked like in the fall. They were amazing. There was a bit of downward pressure in the A class in finals after you get past the top couple spots. I'm wondering if the judges kind of noticed, "Hey, we're a little high relative to the rest." Meanwhile, in Houston, the scores near the top shot up by something like 4 points. Again, probably in response to the "national" picture. (Read: the scores at this contest.) Melissa is killing it in their first year in Open. They'll be seeded 1st in the country to start off their season. Kind of crazy how frequently we've seen guards go from A to the top of Open recently. Underscores my point in the Houston thread about how A versus Open seems a grey area more and more. Marcus just looks misclassed. I don't know what else to say about that score. Heck, maybe even Origins Open, too, with an 80. That's a huge score for this class. Origins might need 2 world guards. Little Elm beating Flower Mound is a big surprise for me. Well, in equipment, FloMo had the edge, but that was it. (Those scores both look more like what I expected.) Little Elm must move very well and have a great design to do as well as they did in those captions. In fact, with this score, they're trending around Carmel, and *ahead* of The Woodlands, who only managed a 70.5 last week at TCGC, and got an unexpectedly low equipment score. Granted, TWHS did about the same as they did last year at their first TCGC event on Feb 1st, before going on to get a 98 at Dayton, so it's hard to tell. They're apparently very tortoise-y. Still, Little Elm beating TWHS is something to keep an eye on, as shocking as that would be, based on how they looked in the fall. Origins world doing great in their first year back. I've actually seen this one. Personally, I'm not in love with the design -- a little too chaotic and the color scheme is dull -- but they can spin and toss with the best of 'em.

I'm super SUPER excited for Randle! They are amazing!

YASSSSS! Let's GO! Thanks Clarinot!

This was a pretty stacked Scholastic A contest, with 4 of last year's top 10 Dayton guards competing. And, to my pleasant surprise, Jersey Village beat all of them! They're going to Dayton this year, along with Friendswood. Village is in a good place, it seems, especially after snagging 2nd in the content half of the GE sheets. They just need to clean what they have. Friendswood winning is no surprise. There are some questions as to why they're back in A. They did not do poorly in Open -- quite the opposite. At the same time, the barrier between A and Open has seemed a little porous in recent years. It's genuinely hard to tell who belongs where. I don't think I'm alone, either. Just last year the WGI steering committee declined to reclassify Emerson, who was then reclassified by NTCA based on score, according to a poster here. Emerson went on to place FIFTH in Open Class finals, which makes it seem like the WGI steering committee REALLY dropped the ball, if they were willing to let a top 5 Open class guard compete in A. Perhaps it was less obvious early season. Anyway, food for thought. TWHS A continues to do very well, and continues to outperform their content. 3 first places in the performance half of the sheets, but only 1 first place overall in equipment. They're a good skill check in this class for the other guards. Movement caption seems to be their primary weakness. Jordan, Tomball Memorial, and Katy all did very well. Katy was a late-bloomer last year. That could be the case this year. I don't think any are going to Dayton. Of last year's Dayton finalists, Dripping Springs was lowest, but still did very well. They're another one that flourished later in the season last year, if I recall correctly. Pearland wins as expected. That's a great score for Open class. To put things into perspective, Little Elm, who posted the highest ever SO score at Dayton last year, scored a 74.8 at the first regional of 2025. Cy-Fair was close, which could be good for them, because they bloomed late last season. I wasn't expecting them to be this close, honestly, especially after scoring 8 points lower just a week ago at TCGC. Just goes to show how hard it is to trust early season scores (with incomplete shows), and maybe even just how hard it is to trust TCGC scores in general sometimes. 😅 Ditto for Bridgeland. Another 8 point increase. I'll have to look up their old scores, but this score for Undaunted seems higher than usual for them. Will this be the year they make finals at Dayton? It would be so much better if we could actually watch the shows, instead of just relying on scores!

I'm just hoping area J gets broken up for the ISDs like Wylie, McKinney etc. its just so stacked and needs to be broken up...

Guard rule is a no brainer, colorguard should have more impact across the board and having their own judge is very appropriate for the state contest. For rule 1 (not CG) I dont think its necessarily a setup for D2 contests rather its so bands success are reliant on completely different programs being successful at region. I dont think it should pass for 2A-4A, but 5A-6A it feels like a no brainer considering it only adds 1-2 slots each Rule 2 just needs a little more definition (what declares a round up? 21 to 5 slots or use a top half system where you need 23-24 to have 5 slots? Where is the line) but otherwise this should absolutely pass in some form at the very least for 4A-6A due to declining enrollment being combined with way more dense, competitive areas. Rule 3 and 5 just depend on how fast UIL wants to make these sort of changes (rule 3 needs an announcement 1 year+ in advance for scheduling and rule 5 needs enough judges to not spread the state thin) Rule 4 should exist for UIL because it has a fundamentally different scoring system than BOA. BOA is much more “bubble” based where point differences in a sub caption is much more deliberate (a 28 in GE is COMPLETELY different to a 34 in GE) and compared only to bands relative to each other which UIL uses ordinals, and makes scoring COMPLETELY comparison based. At 2022 state almost everyone down to 20 were within 30-70 points out of 1000 to each other and in the same 2-3 sub-boxes, which means schools like Dawson, if using the BOA system, were darn close to Hebron in about every regard (This got fixed with stricter criteria post 2021-2022) (everyone is relative to 1st place rather than the bubble in BOA along with point differences having significantly more meaning). Movement to the top from the bottom is much harder when the bottom is all clustered together and does create bias since theyre all compared to each other resulting in lower ordinal scores compared to the top half, which for smaller areas only emphasizes a divide which could be nonexistent. I along with others argue that UIL should just be random performance time in general for finals rather than the 4-5 rhetoric, since schools like Vandegrift and Hebron could perform 1st and make state regardless, which would also make it easier for judges to properly compare and score relative to the top since the finalists will play right next to bands competing to merely qualify.

Not too familiar with too many Austin/San Antonio/RGV guards, so I apologize for my lack of coverage on them In terms of Houston for the Valentine's Day weekend: This competition will be held at Goose Creek Memorial HS and will be the debut show for some guards 2025 AA State Champion Deer Park HS will debut here, excited to see if they can achieve more than what they did last year, and it's likely they'll be promoted to A or National A if the odds are in their favor. It's their first season as a split team since 2024, so their JV team also has a good chance of being promoted too depending on how well they do. This is Nimitz's 2nd show in AA and after receiving 2nd this past weekend I'm positive they'll medal again plus have a chance of being promoted. GCM, the host, will have their first show in AA here, not too sure as to how they will score this comp! This will be Randle's first show in National A, only competing against fellow district school Fulshear. This may give them an opportunity to come on top, or it may be a slow start. With how quick they've been promoted, I believe it will be the former But, any predictions I've made so far have been near entirely incorrect so I don't consider myself a determining figure in these results. Only two teams in Novice, and I can sense South Houston taking first again. They've been having a wonderful and successful season. I've yet to see Anahuac live but for their first competition and season in TCGC getting 4th in their class is awesome!!

TCG(ene)C some might say 😂

Hopefully not that LISD will be moved into Area E/F/I 😕seems ridiculous for all reasons

LD bell vs Keller now... and a mix of birdville high school. who will take first place birdville or keller or LD bell?

The LISD bands switching to a Houston football region separated from the Austin groups is….interesting. Wonder what that means for areas.

interesting foot ball had some weird changes. We saw vandergrift change regions. Hoping its not the same for band....

yay! AT long last.

New additions: Newman Smith L.D. Bell Mansfield Southlake Carroll This now makes for a very interesting contest now.

With the absolutely absurd growth of the Melissa contest, I'm not sure what the future holds for WMI. And we just found out that BOA Bedford got moved up a week, so that complicates things even more than it already was. They need to get on the new area sheets or they won't have many bands competing here. Wasn't too long ago when Flower Mound was here... just shows how much can change in just a couple of years.

Yes, but they'll have to go against Region 2 as well as Region 25 groups in the AREA round.

This is a thing on HornRank, and I thought it would be cool to have a dedicated topic on these forums for Texas-specific staff changes. Here's what we know so far for 2026: Who is currently searching for new head directors? - - - - Cedar Park Medina Valley Creek View (new school) Tomball West (new school) Tivy Bremond Hillsboro Elkhart Coupland (new school; their district will finally serve grades 9-12) Lorena Little Cypress-Mauriceville Ranger Gunter Palestine Westwood Northwest Mineola has already promoted assistant director Donald Myers to the head director role.