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Is it that Nationals isn’t what it used to be, or that San Antonio is WAY more than it used to be? I’m inclined to think the latter. The level of consistency and parity among Texas Bands has risen dramatically over the last 20 years, don’t you think?

Props are not required and how much did the props that Broken Arrow have add to their show? was that a deciding factor? they sure looked expensive to build and even more to haul from OK. there is much to be said about what a program spends on drill designers and other expense, so what do you propose to make this fair for everyone. do we limit the amount that a program can spend? do we ban props? do we require that every program write their own drill and arrange their own music? do we restrict the private lessons of their students? do we limit who they can bring in to consult? Avon and Carmel spend next to nothing to go to Grand Nats and get to go every year. they sleep in their own beds every night for their super regional and grand nats. They do not have to deal with a 8 hour rule as it appears to be unique to Texas. That is my bigger concern. Every program has the ability to fundraise to support their programs. I am not talking about just selling coupon books and/or mulch. I have been doing fundraising outside of the student families for a number of years. the programs that claim that they struggle actually have the advantage as they can quickly qualify for grants. the schools that are in affluent areas do not, as every school and district is rated in a system that grant supporters want to see. Your program may a high income demographic and fail to qualify for support, but have a huge transient population in the means of apartments/rentals that need support - especially if you are in an area that supports a military base - moving every 3 years. Our program is considered by far too many to be an affluent program - but our cluster foundation provided more than $50K in support this season for marching scholarships for Grand Nats, for one of our middle schools to do Midwest clinic, for instruments at other schools. This funding was to support kids that would not otherwise be able to participate based on their financial situation. If you think that the "affluent" schools do not have a free lunch program - you are mistaken. I would welcome and be more interested in any thoughts on how we can ensure that every kid has the ability to perform in the marching arts - and I would support anything that is reasonable, but let's not assume that the only means it to provide for some is to take away from others.

Just wanted to put this post up to rave how amazing Hebron was this year. As a former Vandegrift alum who went there from 2016 - 2019, I have to say this was easily the greatest marching band show of all time. These kids sounded like a DCI group. I've never heard such a rich tone, powerful low brass, and technical proficiency from a high school group before and I just want to say thank you to all of the Hebron kids who just redefined how good a high school marching band can be. You've changed marching band forever and have taken this amazing art form we all love to a whole new level. You guys should feel like rockstars after performing that show and like I said before, thank you for all your hard work. You guys are the Michael Jackson's of marching band and pulled off the greatest marching band show of all time.

That was 2002, they beat out LD Bell by .25 in finals despite Bell topping them by over a point in prelims. I really hope one (or both) of them decides to make the trip. As if BOA San Antonio wasn’t intense enough already.

I do feel as though Vista was Robbed with points. idk if it was about them going right before broken arrow and they were comparing Broken Arrow to Vista. I just feel like they should've got in the 90 range.

Now that we've gone through another round of UIL State competitions, especially with a new scoring system, I think I would like to weigh in on this. I've seen a lot of people sort of griping about the addition of percussion scores to the sheets, which I guess I understand, but I think their issue with the scores resides in a different issues with UIL judging and not the inclusion of percussion scores themselves. I have long wanted percussion and guard to at least be a little more included into the scoring systems, since in the previous state competitions, they each only very slightly affected scores in just a few categories, despite being equally as important as the rest of the band. So, for me, giving percussion their own subclass helps a lot in resolving some of these issues. It's hard to know the exact effect and weight percussion was given in the previous system, but at least at this point, they have a defined weight in scoring. That brings me to my new issue, the exclusion of color guard/dance teams. If you're going to give percussion their own category, that leads me to believe your intent was to gain a more inclusive, all-encompassing score, yet you just completely left out the entire guard. This, I think I'm arguing, means that the color guard is valued even less than they were originally. I really like the way DCI scoring is set up, considering it is very fair in its inclusivity of all portions of a marching band but also awards things with fair, defined weight, something I personally believe is being left out of both BOA and UIL. Now, this is probably the most common complaint among people about the UIL scoring system, but it mathematically just makes absolutely no sense at all. At least in the BOA scoring, the gaps between different groups can be uneven, meaning 1-3 can be really close, and then there can be a big gap between 3 and 4, then 4-7 are super close, etc. I feel like this is the most intuitive way of judging, where instead of just ranking them, you are actually critiquing their performance and then the rankings are weighed properly with how much better one band is than the other. With UILs scoring, the gap that is between 3 and 4 doesn't matter at all. This gives a huge advantage to band 4 who in a BOA system is pretty far out of medaling for that category, and disadvantageous for 1-3 (especially silver and bronze) since their lead over the other bands is basically completely ignored. However, this can go in the completely opposite direction, too, almost never really finding a perfect center. The best example I think of this came from the percussion scoring this year. Normally, if you score a band 980 in 1st and the 11th place band is at a 940, you're pretty much saying that the band in first is just slightly better than groups 2-11, quite literally about a 4% range of scores. With UIL's scoring, you're quite literally scoring the band in 11th as if they're 11 times worse than the band in first. This is exactly what happened to Marcus and Flower Mound this year. Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining about the actual rankings themselves, I have my own opinions but this isn't the place for those. My focus is just on how dramatic that shift in placement is for these two bands. Outside of the percussion scores, Flower Mound was leading Marcus by 5 points. That's a decent lead which was completely squandered by the percussion scores for Flower Mound, a lead that I don't think really should've been possible for Marcus to make up based on the other scoring. Like I have said, I am not at all trying to say I think Flower Mound was better than Marcus, or visa versa, I am purely saying that I think the scoring system was way more detrimental to Flower Mound than it probably should've been. Obviously I think these are not really new complaints, and I know that they're pretty widely expressed throughout the community. While it does seem like some of these inconsistencies seem to work themselves out in the end to an extent, I just think there's an incredible amount of room for improvement.

That argument doesn't really hold water when Round Rock did worse at BOA SA in Visual GE (33rd place) then at UIL State in Content and Design (25th). I know that's not apple to apples but it's as close as we have. Most likely the tarp meant nothing to their score. Their issue this year is the Content in the Visual Caption of the their show in BOA and UIL. They got 28th in Visual Ensemble at BOA and 23rd in Visual Ensemble at UIL State, but scored much better in Individual Visual at both events.

My biggest surprise of the whole competition was Johnson! The visual design stands out against the other top Texas groups in such a good way. If they continue their trajectory I don’t see why they can’t make finals here within a few years (or maybe next year 👀). My other big surprise was honestly Leander. That finals performance was one of the most impactful performances I’ve seen, ever. They maxed out at the perfect time. Since seeing Westlake at Austin, I had this feeling all season that they would make finals here. How unfortunate is it that they had that big electronics delay and fell .1 short of finals. Also props to the Area B bands for giving the Austin LISD bands a run for their money to finish in the top ten! There was a lot of hype (which was deserved) for Cedar Park, Vista Ridge, and Rouse to the point I was convinced they were locks for top 10 or even top half. DFW is still holding things down even without Flo Mo.

The only bands to have ever swept captions in San Antonio finals are LISD-North bands. Marcus 2007, 2012 Flower Mound 2016 Hebron 2021

I would like a bigger emphasis on color guard/dance teams.