Leaderboard

This has been the same conversation for years. When Marcus and L.D. Bell reigned supreme people wondered what was the point. When Westfield and Reagan were the kings people wondered why they ought to keep trying. These comments and concerns are ingrained into competitive marching. It can be hard to keep missing after trying, but we have to remember some things. Its more about the results it’s about what you learn through participating and putting effort. Do the same bands seem to keep reigning supreme? Yes. However we put too much focus on big finalist achievements instead of focusing on big accomplishments on a smaller scale. Glenn broke their first 80 ever at San Antonio this year, Argyle swept AA as a newly 5A band, Pecos won A with a 2 rating at region. Small accomplishments need to be amplified, because there’s value we don’t see. Money is an issue, sure.. Any competitive activity at the HS level will always have that inequity at its core, and that’s a huge shame. I would say “judging bias” is always a big concern, but I rarely see it. Outlier scoring can seem shocking on the surface, but some analysis can usually bring genuine justification.

Please email any and all streaming issues and complaints to music@uiltexas.org so this never happens again!

3rd - Cedar Ridge

This post will probably get deleted. https://recaps.competitionsuite.com/4968ab72-0c9c-4159-bf74-3b8e7befedaf.htm

Every top band in Texas blows DCI away in terms of woodwinds.

Is anyone else hoping for a 10 way tie for 14th? 😂

Y’all literally wasted 2-3 pages in this thread asking for recaps. 🤣🤣🤣

I’m going to copy and paste my other post here into this thread as well because it’s so important!! Friends we need to BAND TOGETHER and ask UIL to allow the SMBC to be streamed by a service that is more Band friendly and not so much Football friendly! Oh my goodness has the state of Texas not PROVEN to UIL that our marching bands are absolutely incredible? This is shameful to me that a FOOTBALL streaming service is allowed first right of refusal over services like Box5 or FloMarching who SPECIALIZE in streaming marching bands! I’m so aggravated by this. It’s an insult to our great marching bands, honestly. They deserve better. Having said all that, PLEASE direct your streaming complaints directly to music@uiltexas.org. Please, please, please!!!!

We Are All Winners In Life Every Band Here Deserves First Place Hebron

So I have seen a number of comments this year about a Texas Trophy for the winner of BOA San Antonio. The Bands of Claudia Taylor Johnson Foundation and the CTJ Band Parents Assc. serve as the host program of the BOA San Antonio Super Regional. While it will not happen this year, the bands of CTJ Foundation has made the request to MFA/BOA to create a traveling trophy similar to the grand nationals eagle (Kevin) Trophy. I hope that we can have this in place for next years BOA San Antonio Super Regional. I have heard a number of suggestions for the trophy to include the "armadillo" and the "road runner" - there is interest in UTSA in sponsoring the Texas Road Runner trophy but I will keep you all posted as this develops. It would be my intent that, that the trophy would recognize the previous winners of BOA San Antonio since it became a Super Regional on November 1st 2003 (FYI - San Antonio was the first Super Regional). those would include the following 2003 - Westfield 2004 - Reagan 2005 - Reagan 2006 - LD Bell 2007 - Marcus 2008 - LD Bell 2009 - LD Bell 2010 - Marcus 2011 - LD Bell 2012 - Marcus 2013 - The Woodlands 2014 - Claudia Taylor Johnson 2015 - Flower Mound 2016 - Flower Mound 2017 - Claudia Taylor Johnson 2018 - Flower Mound 2019 - Reagan 2020 - Cancelled due to Covid 2021 - Hebron once we have support of MFA/BOA, we will create a poll to decide the name of the trophy - including the nickname of the trophy - FYI - the Woodlands is credited with naming the Eagle as Kevin after hosting him in 2013. welcome your thoughts.

Randomly stumbled across this forum today & so thankful that I did. I thought all discussions nowadays had moved over to the likes of Facebook & Discord, so was pleasantly surprised to find such an active, passionate, & articulate group of folks here! As an old band-head with a young kiddo experiencing his first BOA SA SR competition this weekend, I'm truly in awe at just how many incredible programs are in attendance. I can't even begin to imagine just how difficult of a job it must be for the judging panels to accurately & fairly rank 80+ bands over the course of 2 days. It certainly seems like a 3rd day with Semi-Finals & Finals could be warranted (if only that were feasible)! Looking forward to the remaining prelim performances + what is likely to be a night of jam-packed action and sheer brilliance. Regardless of the results, I hope that everyone walks away feeling supremely proud of their efforts and knowing that their hard work is absolutely appreciated!

Devastated for Timber Creek.

This high cam looks like a 2005 webcam smeared with vasoline…

It’s Hebron’s world and we’re all just living in it

Conspiracy theory: All these Vista hate accounts are being made by Vista members to boost support for their program on the forums. (I'm joking obviously)

queue 12 pages of recap requests... Congrats to all the kids that have worked so hard this year. Been a band dad a long time and a marching band fan longer, and I don't think there has ever been a field this entertaining and exciting from 1 all the way into the twenties and beyond. Congrats to Vandy on SMBC and Hebron on BOA (Texas) Grand Nats. Anyone worried that a pandemic had put a damper on arts activities like this need not be concerned any more. Great year for Texas music.

The big dogs weren’t always the big dogs. They had to overcome the more “successful” programs to get where they are now. It’s constantly happening but it does take a while.

Super proud of Odessa Permian. 2016 - 37th 2021 - 33rd 2022 - 29th Beat some really good bands today. A little better every year.

Finals Results: 1. Hebron H.S., TX 96.75 2. The Woodlands H.S., TX 96.50 3. Ronald Reagan H.S., TX 96.00 4. Vandegrift H.S., TX 95.80 5. Vista Ridge H.S., TX 94.40 6. Claudia Taylor Johnson H.S., TX 94.20 7. Flower Mound H.S., TX 93.35 8. Round Rock H.S., TX 91.60 9. Cedar Ridge H.S., TX 91.35 10. Cedar Park H.S., TX 91.25 11. Coppell H.S., TX 90.50 12. Pearland H.S., TX 89.65 13. Marcus H.S., TX 89.35 14. Keller H.S., TX 88.80 Outstanding Music Performance: Hebron H.S., TX Outstanding Visual Performance: Hebron H.S., TX Outstanding General Effect: The Woodlands H.S., TX

Bitter, party of one! There isn't a single band in Finals that isn't excellent. You will see many of the same bands in Finals on Tuesday and the UIL system is very different from BOA. These bands excel under both systems because they are among the best high school bands in the country.

Bro still hasn’t gotten over State 2018

It's almost that time of (next) year again! This thread will be devoted to all things winter guard, and maybe even some winter percussion as well. All contributions are welcome! Hopefully this thread won't turn into a personal blog. Texas will have INCREDIBLE representation on the color guard side of things at the WGI World Championships in April. Below is a list of all the current entries from Texas. There are a lot of them, including some new ones! It's going to be an amazing ride! Scholastic A Burleson Centennial HS Clear Brook HS Clear Creek HS Coppell HS JV Eastlake HS JV Friendswood HS Georgetown HS Hebron HS Klein Cain HS Memorial HS Mount Pleasant HS Mount Pleasant HS JV A Pebble Hills HS Pine Tree HS Rock Hill HS Round Rock HS Seven Lakes HS Southlake Carroll HS William B. Travis HS Wylie East HS Wylie HS Independent A ATX Winterguard Eagle Mountain Independent Ether Independent Sam Houston State Scholastic Open College Park HS Coppell HS Eastlake HS Varsity James Bowie HS (Austin) Klein Oak HS Little Elm HS McKinney HS McNeil HS Westlake HS (TX) Winston Churchill HS Independent Open Glory Independent ORIGINS Open Redemption Guard Undaunted Scholastic World Moe and Gene Johnson HS The Woodlands HS Independent World Invictus Mirage Performance Ensemble ORIGINS Third Coast Independent

I put this list together just for grins. This list includes the scores from the SA finals and the GN finals and then sorts the bands in order from those scores. I know you can't compare scores exactly between contests but I think from a relative sense you can get an idea.

All 4 Texas bands in semis 🥳🥳🥳

As a former high school marcher, there is disappointment when you can't break the top. However, I don't think the reasosn you listed are applicable in a lot of cases. Money will separate all high school activities, judging inconsistency happens, yet there tends to be some reasoning for why. It is extremely important for bands and their students to make small, attainable goals in order to build a stronger program. In my senior year of high school, our major goal was to make Area finals in Area C. When we heard we made it, the energy we felt was unmatched. Did we go to state? No. Did our band get significantly better this season? Yes!

I dislike Content and Design as much as I dislike Visual General Effect. Why? The students have no, none, zero, zilch control over this. It becomes a glory spot for the directors and design teams. Are they part of the organization? Absolutely. Should they get a judging slot with such weight? No.

Schrodinger's recap. Unless if posted, the recap simultaneously does and does not exist.

Best Fireworks.... Vista 🙂

That rifle toss was amazing! Somewhere in Austin, there's a good Christian woman clutching her cross and hyperventilating, but I can't get enough of this Cedar Ridge show. Commitment to character, indeed! I love when the flute soloist in the opener stops playing, and then she kinda crouches down like some sort of creature herself. 😄

I think Hebron has a shot at finals this year!

“You’re entitled to your opinion. I’m entitled to mine. Yours is informed by no better evidence than mine is..” Objection. Facts not in evidence. This statement has no basis for support and is therefore purely speculative. “But I will say that there is evidence.” Anecdotal evidence is largely meaningless, only empirical evidence matters. Due to the nature of this forum and some participant’s preferences neither of us will be allowed to openly discuss the evidence and I have no desire to take this conversation outside the forum. I’ve been down this path enough times before. Hang on to your opinion if it helps you rationalize outcomes and enjoy competitions. It didn’t help me when I was getting started. “I will say also that I have heard, with my own ears, directors communicating that the phenomena does occur.” So have I, generally from Directors struggling to rationalize their programs difficulties breaking through to the next level. Saying something happens doesn’t make it true. “I’ve heard judges say it does occur.” No comment. Addressing this directly would require breaking our programs Code of Conduct. I’m not going to do that. However, I will add that I notice you didn’t indicate whether the judges you heard said they have personally made decisions based on reputation or if they were saying they know about others who admit to doing it. “So it’s not just my opinion.” Correct. Unfortunately it’s a very widely held fallacy. Again, that doesn’t make it true. “If you reread my original post, I don’t quibble with it.” No need. I noted that the first time. I’m not convinced that bears any relevance on the subject. “Your esoteric explanation really dances around the key word- it’s subjective. Just like gymnastics and ice skating - and therefore it uses criterion that aren’t objective.” This activity is a combination of science and art. Of course it’s subjective; I did not suggest otherwise. One of the issues in UIL judging is that the relative value of these subjective preferences are not well defined. For example, are musical and visual accuracy more or less valuable than demand? This example, to a certain extent, also falls on a sliding scale of subjectivity but that doesn’t mean it can’t be better defined through documented video training examples. The NFL and NCAA use this option to clarify pass interference rules changing from well defined objectivity in the ‘70’s to the highly subjective mess of today’s game. Another example would be whether music and drill demand have higher value when performed in combination versus being performed separately. This one is actually defined on the judging sheet but we routinely see some bands highly rewarded for what amounts to “park and play” even though this is clearly not in compliance with the current judging sheet. Adjudication based entirely, or even just heavily, on personal preferences is not sustainable. As for the esoteric nature of my comment, you seem to have missed the point. There are people on this forum who can, and will, learn when given the opportunity, simply because they want too. “Like reputation.“ Where exactly is “reputation” on the judging sheet? I’m not saying there are no Judges that have ever been influenced by reputation. But I am saying that it is a very small minority and also highly inappropriate. All a Judge has is their own reputation which is why they don’t let a bands reputation influence the outcome of a competition. Each performance must speak for itself or integrity and credibility is lost. “Boxing” An interesting example. A few years ago I asked a Judge I’ve known for decades about his decision regarding First and Second place at DCI Finals in Indianapolis. He talked me through the details and then said, “If you want to beat the World Champion, you have to do it decisively and leave no question about it.” On the surface that statement might appear to support the idea of reputation influencing a Judge but further discussion revealed that’s not what he was talking about. If you want to break through to the next level, kick down the door. Win decisively. Leave no doubt. “And that’s irrefutable.” Hardly, but you have made it clear you have no intention of being persuaded which is why I originally indicated I was done with this conversation. I chose to reengage because of the possibility that someone else will be open to the information and learn a new perspective. Thereby giving up on a tired fallacy, while gaining a better understanding of the adjudication process and more satisfying enjoyment of the contests they attend. It worked for me. Yeah, I know. My wife always tells me, “Too many words.” 🙄

This will be a long post, so bear with me here. So for my own curiosity, I've been working on a spreadsheet that displays all of a finalist school's scores and placements for BOA contests over the past 11 years (10 contests, since 2020 was cancelled), and essentially averages them amongst many other things. You'll find a bunch of information in here, such as average placement in BOA and UIL, highest scores in BOA sub-categories, fun facts about the champions, things of that sort. I've added all BOASA Finals and 6A (or 5A for the 2 comps that the highest classifications had not yet been upped) UIL State awards, including 6A from today and BOA from Saturday. In making this, I did have a few decisions I had to make. How far back should I go? 10 contests is an arbitrary number, which is nice and round, and I liked that is sort of encapsulates a generation of marching band without including a too large or small amount of data points. The results would change a decent amount if I included 11 or 9 contests, but I chose 10, again because it is a nice round number that also lines up with UIL state years, and because it also includes one of my all time favorite shows, Marcus 2012 :). Keep in mind that this is how bands perform in finals, so if a band did not make finals, I didn't just include their prelims scores. Because finals are judged differently than prelims, and scores vary heavily between the two, I felt more comfortable just leaving out those data points for those bands who had not made it or attended for various other reasons in that year. Additionally, if a band had less than 3 finals appearances, I still included their results, but not in comparison to the other more consistent finalists, as their averages would not be as statistically accurate as those with more data points. If they did have a record high in a category that didn't involve an average, I would've still added them there (but I do not remember this occurring in anything that I looked at). For example, Avon, Owasso, and Blue Springs were included in the main sheet, but if they want to be more involved then they should come and hang out with us a little more often! Finally, when comparing BOA and UIL, I decided to leave out 2020, only because most bands were not able to attend and there was not an adjacent BOA event to compare data to. I added the disclaimer in the spreadsheet for CTJ since they obviously won a championship and that should not be ignored, but additionally in fairness to the many other bands who chose not to attend, I just didn't include it. Here are some interesting notes I found while looking through it and working on it: FloMo and CTJ both have won their championships only in years that they have also won a caption, meaning that there hasn't been a year in which they've won a caption and not won the championship. So for future reference, if either of them win a caption, you know they're going to be the champ! (sarcasm, somewhat) BOA champions have only won Music in 5 out of the 10 contests Hebron in 2022 is the only champion in the last decade to have won finals without winning GE. There have been 12 Music awarded, 8 of which have gone to Lewisville ISD schools (2 ties, 2014 between Marcus and Leander, and 2015 between Marcus and Hebron) Reagan holds records in all Visual and GE sub-captions, Hebron has records in all Music sub-captions (there are some ties in there in each as well) While it may seem like a long time ago, Marcus still has by far the largest win in BOASA recent history, leading the pack by a massive 2.85 points in 2012. FloMo's Leonardo show is the only show that has come even remotely close to that in 2016, winning by 2.05. Let me know some other things you find that are interesting to you! And if there are any mistakes or anything, let me know and I'll edit them and re-upload! Finally, as I have already mentioned multiple times, this is completely arbitrary. The results would be different if I chose 7 years or 13 years or 18 years. Completely different. 10 years was the perfect amount for what I was looking to compare. I'm thinking about doing this for the most recent 5 years and the past 20 years as well just to have additional spans of time to compare, but as you can imagine, adding that data would take quite a while to what already took me quite a bit of time so it'll take me a while to get to those. A Decade of Texas Marching Band.xlsx

Friends we need to BAND TOGETHER and ask UIL to allow the SMBC to be streamed by a service that is more Band friendly and not so much Football friendly! Oh my goodness has the state of Texas not PROVEN to UIL that our marching bands are absolutely incredible? This is shameful to me that a FOOTBALL streaming service is allowed first right of refusal over services like Box5 or FloMarching who SPECIALIZE in streaming marching bands! I’m so aggravated by this. It’s an insult to our great marching bands, honestly. They deserve better. Having said all that, PLEASE direct your streaming complaints directly to music@uiltexas.org. Please, please, please!!!!

Vandegrift’s 6A State placements: 2016: 4th 2018: 3rd 2021: 2nd 2022: 1st So so so well deserved!!!

1st - Waxahachie 2nd - Hebron 3rd - The Woodlands 4th - Ronald Reagan 5th - Flower Mound 6th - Cedar Ridge 7th - Coppell 8th - Vista Ridge 9th - Keller 10th - Marcus 11th - Pearland 12th - Round Rock 13th - Claudia Taylor Johnson 14th - Vandegrift

Vista Ridge went from a bubble band and 16th at BOA SA 2017 to winning gold at 6A State 2018.

This is the first time LD Bell has attended the SMBC and missed finals since 1998. Very bummed for those kids, but they had a great season with a great show. Super excited to see the dominance of DFW bands at this contest (6 from DFW, 4 from Austin, 2 from San Antonio and Houston). Areas represented in finals: B (3 bands), C (3 bands), D (4 bands!!), E (1 band), F (1 band), and H (2 bands). A bit shocked to see no Area I bands in finals, but congrats to all!

2:00 PM - Pearland 2:15 PM - Waxahachie 2:30 PM - Round Rock 2:45 PM - Coppell 3:00 PM - Claudia Taylor Johnson 3:15 PM - Keller 3:30 PM - Marcus 4:00 PM - Ronald Reagan 4:15 PM - Vandegrift 4:30 PM - Cedar Ridge 4:45 PM - The Woodlands 5:00 PM - Flower Mound 5:15 PM - Vista Ridge 5:30 PM - Hebron

Dang, CTJ was so good they made finals twice!

Just to make sure everyone has the right information, the correct email address for UIL Music is music@uiltexas.org not .com. The UIL absolutely does want to hear your opinions and feedback on this.

When I said that I thought it was going to be Hebron's version of Flower Mound in 2016, I wasn't exactly expecting The Woodlands to do The Woodlands 2016 as well. And in finals this time! Absolutely amazing! Congrats to all the amazing bands!

Yeah that was 5 points above the rest of the competition by Hebron. Just another stratosphere from any other band in the entire country. Not close at all.

Woodlands guard ate. 👏🏼

CTJ went through all that trouble to build an Earth prop when they could have just borrowed Round Rocks after they were done 😛

Finals metro representation: DFW - 5 Austin - 5 SA - 2 Houston - 2

Very bittersweet for Leander. Finishing 2nd in 3A after a rough start to the season, but missing finals for the first time since 2013. What an amazing streak that should be heavily celebrated.

Timber Creek was great! Very clean! Big UIL vibes, but I could definitely see them top 20 here.

That's actually an amazing idea and a great way to honor the previous (and future) SASR champions, can't imagine anyone at BOA objecting to it. Props to the CTJ people for getting the ball rolling on this!

absolutely atrocious ❤️

I honestly don't care about the acoustics. I'm tired of those Indianapolis schools having the luxury every year of participating in grand nationals while sleeping in their own beds and racking up all these finishes in finals. Let's see those schools start paying for trips to DFW and having to compete with the big boys of Texas.