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And before I forget, CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL OF THE GUARDS THIS SEASON! It has been an absolute pleasure getting to watch all of you grow the past few months. I'm bummed we have to wait another year, but I look forward to seeing everyone out there on the marching field this summer and/or fall. ❤️

I'm sorry I'm late in replying. It's been crazy since Friday! The school is Glenn High School, and we actually won 1st place! We're State Champs!

very happy for tw. it was a great run overall, just some dirt here and there. still think they could be playing the WGI game a little better but i also respect how they just "go for it" as far as having everyone on the floor do hard stuff. really kinda fearless. also cool to see Cyndi's visions start to come to life w/ the next level talent of the performers. poetry indeed. the theme is there for you to dig into, patiently illustrated. it's not spectacle or cutesy sleight-of-hand. it's mature and has the strangeness of good art. but yeah def do something you can get closer to 100% clean next year unless they start to consider difficulty and risk more LOL

I think this is the tightest SO Group of finalists that I've seen in quite a while. From top to bottom, they were all so good.

Westlake currently in 2nd in open class!!!

Origins Open. Goosebumps. I love shows that are a love letter to the activity like that. Added narration/voiceovers from what I assume are various important voices in the development of WGI and performers HUGELY assisted the concept I got from the get go this season. Made it much more emotional, got me a little teary eyed.

Congratulations to all of the guards that competed this past weekend at the state championships! If your season has ended, an extra special thank you for all of your hard work throughout the season. Hopefully you made some great memories! Sorry for the delay, I've been unsuccessfully searching for videos on YouTube. 😅 Dayton in three days!

yaaayy Marcus!! they're really going!! cmoooon gold!! fly fly fly! any medal will be nice for sure. C-ville may be hard to top but theyre not as Teflon as they first seemed, if mideast is accurate. woodlands should be good even for 2nd as long as they can keep w/in 3 pts of Avon lol. crazy that that's the standard this yr. for the record my top two are still avon/woodlands. rarely change my mind unless a unit doesnt improve like normal or looks like it has been entirely replaced by a new and much better guard lol. arcadia will likely make inroads in DA and the vocab half of IA (amazing designers, solid performers), but Avon/woodlands are the two that have the strongest doses of all 3 of the GE holy trinity of emotional, intellectual, and aesthetic effect. however still need to see woodlands from a proper upstairs angle, miiiight not get it until Dayton. grand oaks, 'nother cisd guard, wut wut! lol. kinda buried in the schedule as is normal w/ A class. Oaks is fab, should put up a decent fight for a medal, hopefully they've been working on the staging, think that'll be the biggest hurdle to the podium. love the aesthetic. skills of the performers are prob pretty close to gold medal level. ofc also hoping all 4 of Westlake, Bowie, azle, and flomo make finals.

Ok everyone so I found all the bands that will be apart of Area J- 6A Area J (Region 2, 24, 25): Region 2 (9)- Braswell HS Byron Nelson HS Denton Guyer HS Hebron HS Flowermound HS Lewisville HS Marcus HS Northwest HS V.R. Eaton HS Region 24 (5)- Little Elm HS McKinney Boyd HS McKinney HS Prosper HS Rock Hill HS Region 25 (7)- Allen HS Plano East HS Plano HS Plano West HS Princeton HS Wylie East HS Wylie HS This means 21 bands total for the Area and that if all 21 receive a 1 at Regional, then 4 bands will advance from this area.

It looks like Prosper has removed this from their calendar, but I’m not convinced that they won’t be going. We’ll see! Side note: It’s crazy cool to see groups like Friendswood, Argyle, and Bridgeland try their hand at Grand Nats. In the last 10 seasons, we’ve seen a slew of 12 first-time TX nats finalists: Round Rock (‘13), Cedar Ridge (‘13), Flower Mound (‘14), Hebron (‘15), Keller (‘15), Cedar Park (‘16), Prosper (‘18), Vandegrift (‘19), Vista Ridge (‘21), Southlake Carroll (‘22), Hendrickson (‘22), Pearland (‘23) The culture here in TX is crazy good, especially considering that many of these groups are relatively fresh on the scene. Looking ahead, I anticipate this list to grow by a name or two this season. I wonder who will follow after that!

cinco ranch 2024 show

I decided to peep the scores and Avon….Jesus Also congrats to TW’s on the bronze medal 🥉 🥳🥳🥳 and also to Marcus, JB and Westlake in SO! I don’t think I’ll have time tomorrow to rewatch the broadcast unfortunately, but congrats to all the guards on an incredible season!!!

TWHS’ show is truly epic. Just unrelenting with the tosses, but in the most elegant way possible. Probably one of my favorite SW shows ever, partially because of the audacity to even attempt it.

ok good, Carmel up to 5th, 3 points ahead of WC in 9th. a little twilight zone-ish before. tw still in 3rd, 1.1 pts off 2nd, 1.2 pts ahead of tarpon. 3rd's prob where they'll end up in finals, which is fab. wasn't even expecting them to show up at Dayton this yr so it's a pleasant surprise. really a treat. cool to see them develop into a consistent medalist quality group. guard is finally as strong or stronger than the band!!! Lol. think they already very obviously have the talent for gold. designers (designer?) just need to figure out how to frame that talent in a gold medal worthy way. not to say the staging/choreo this year is weak by any stretch of the imagination, it's quite fantastic, esp considering it mostly comes from one person. but once u get to the tippy top of the world class u gotta deal w/ those legendary design teams. breadth of talent and lots of tosses won't get u gold. which really that prob SHOULD be more of a consideration on the sheets, difficulty/risk and whatnot, bc it rewards the actual performers a bit more, but alas it is not, not explicitly anyway lol. variety range and depth do provide a particular challenge of their own.

I think any slight issues they may be having are certainly influenced by nerves. First of all, it's Dayton. Second of all, this is the first time the entire season they've competed against anyone. They've essentially been giving (judged) exhibition performances the whole season. So, it's like smooth sailing until the world championships as far as nerves go.

Grand Oaks was fantastic this morning! That score should be more than enough to put them in finals.

Looks like for the first time since 2019, there will be an out-of-state band attending San Antonio this year. Organ Mountain H.S. (NM) will be attending San Antonio this year.

Once again, a little bit late to this, but a third non-Texas band has been confirmed for this regional. Mustang (OK) will be attending this regional. This is the 2nd year in a row that Mustang will be attending a regional in Texas, following their 2nd place finish at Midland last year. Like with Jenks, Mustang will also be attending Grand Nationals later in the season.

Team Texas seems to be off to a great start! Azle with the highest score for the entire Cintas Center Scholastic A panel and 3rd highest score overall. Grand Oaks with the 5th highest score at Truist Arena and 8th highest overall. Lots of close scores, so it will be interesting to see what happens in more direct comparisons, but it seems like Texas could medal in SA this year. Hays and Wiley also looking like possible finalists. In Scholastic Open, Marcus in 2nd, Westlake in 4th. Absolutely fantastic! And they were all judged on the same panel, too. Hopefully at least one of them medals! Bowie also looking like a likely finalist. Clear Brook shouldn't be too far off, either. In Scholastic World, I'm a little bummed that FloMo didn't make it to semis, but this is honestly one of the strongest SW cohorts ever, if not the strongest. Case in point: Carmel, last year's champion, in 7th (!). Skills are improving fast on the scholastic scene. But yeah, FloMo can hold their heads up high. Obviously, congrats to TWHS in 3rd. Hopefully they can keep that placement or even improve on it. But yeah, I mean, strong medalist contenders in all 3 scholastic classes. Way to go! On the Independent side, Origins in 7th, Mirage in 8th -- neck and neck again. That's fantastic! Origins A looking like a strong finalist contender as well. In Open, Menage in 3rd, Glory in 5th, so another couple medal contenders! I can't wait to see some of it starting tomorrow!

see id be a lot more impressed by Paramount's breadth of talent, full ensemble 7s, if they didn't have their pick of the litter during the audition process lol. one of those things that's more impressive to me on the scholastic side bc that talent is built from the ground up. obvi extremely talented performers, still don't dig the design.

yaaaaasss! slaaaaay! i love pleasant surprises!!

3rd place for tw, not bad at all, just need to lock in your performance. im not fully convinced the staging design is strong enough to compete for 2nd but we'll see.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=2Fq7Q24IEE4 fusion is quite clean. hmmm....

And congratulations to Hays (!) and Grand Oaks for coming out on top in their respective National A rounds at TCGC State. Not sure why we aren't getting a proper finals round from TCGC, although I'd guess it has something to do with paying for the double panel. https://recaps.competitionsuite.com/78a25422-d87c-4429-9dcb-1d225a7e8a7a.htm Grand Oaks about a point and a half ahead of everyone else. They'd probably win in finals as well. 2nd through 5th, however, would have been interesting, since they all got practically the same 89.5 score.

Congratulations to Azle and Hebron for coming out on top in their National A rounds in prelims at the NTCA Championships today! Wish we could have seen them... 😒 Full prelims National A results here: https://recaps.competitionsuite.com/f085d005-8c8b-48ed-8432-86df8ca05eae.htm

Don’t write this in stone and get TOO excited yet but Flower Mound has this on their band calendar.

Figured I could make a topic on the changes to 4A, Areas B, C, and D are much different. A and E are relatively unchanged. Region 3 to Area C Region 5 to Area B Region *8 North to Area B Region *8 South to Area D Region 13 to Area D Region 17 to Area D Region 25 to Area C Region 30 to Area B Area's A and E are unchanged. Notable changes are Raymondville moving down to 3A and Alice moving up to 5A in Area E, but the areas contain the same regions. A should send 3-4 to state and E anywhere from 5-7. All of region 8 except for Jarrell, Madisonville, and Salado are now in Area B. Area B in terms of area finalists from last year includes Alvarado, Aubrey, Castleberry, China Spring, Gatesville, Panther Creek, Robinson, Springtown, Van Alstyne, and Wills Point. They combined the north part of old Area D with Area B and the Eastern parts of old Area B are now in Area C. This area should advance 5 bands to state. 5A to 4A reclassification moved Lake Dallas and Fort Worth Southwest down as well. The new Saginaw school will also be in this area. Very competitive. Area C is now incredibly competitive. And big. It should send 6-7 to state, and that's good because you've got Bridge City, Canton, Celina, Community, Farmersville, Little Cypress Mauriceville, Livingston, Lumberton, North Lamar, Paris, Pleasant Grove, Pine Tree, Sulphur Springs, and Sunnyvale that all made finals in their areas last year. That's pretty brutal. 8 of these bands went to state last year including Pine Tree in 5A who I'm sure will be competitive right off the bat in 4A. Area D should still send 4-5 to state but has definitely relaxed a little in depth. Burnet is the sole state qualifier left from old Area D. You've also got bands like Fredericksburg, Godley, Jarrell, Madisonville, and Taylor. The new Fort Bend and Liberty Hill schools will be in this area. State last year would have had one more band advance with these new numbers.

Hey everyone! Hope everybody had a great Easter weekend! As we are approaching the championships for WGI, I went ahead and made a schedule for the Texas bands for SA and SO in Texas time! The schedules are massive and so for anyone who doesn't want to have to deal with switching between schedules/time-zones, here's all the times for the Texas guards in SO in SA. The world class schedule is much easier to follow. As for me, I will definitely be watching finals for all three classes and will cover as many groups as I can after my Thursday/Friday classes are finished. I'll be able to catch all the SA guards on Thursday except Prosper and all but the first four groups of SO. Hopefully I'll be back in time for Tarpon, if not I'll miss the first block of SW but will be back for the other 2! Have no idea what Friday will look like, but we'll know when the time comes. Only a week and a half until the end of the season, which is crazy as it feels like it started last week, but I'm super pumped to see all the guards compete one last time!! WGI Prelims Texas guard times - Google Docs

Forney is possibly considering dropping this competition for Texas Marching Classic. I was told this last week, and I finally got permission to share the information with yall! I don’t know much about the final decision because our director is still deciding.

Lakeview Centennial is listed 5A in the music alignments that were released. I don't believe just because athletics opted up music has to as well, though I am not 100% sure on that. I don't see any downsides to competing in 5A for them in terms of fine arts. They had an impressive showing last year in 6A, should do very well in 5A.

The schedule had been posted for the World Championships! Marcus is indeed going, yay, and The Woodlands are the last group in SW to perform in prelims! Idk if having a later performance time is better for WGI stuff like marching band, but going right after Avon I think might help them in terms of comparison to the other top guards, especially if they have really good run!

I managed to find all the bands in this area- 6A Area C (Region 3, 4, 20, 21)- Region 3 (11)- Forney HS Garland HS John Horn HS Mesquite HS North Forney HS North Garland HS Rockwall HS Rockwall-Heath HS Rowlett HS Royse City HS Sachse HS Region 4 (0 Bands) Region 20 (13)- Berkner HS Dallas Jesuit HS Duncanville HS Irving HS Irving MacArthur HS Irving Nimitz HS JJ Pearce HS Lake Highlands HS Lancaster HS Richardson HS Skyline HS Washington HS Waxahachie HS Region 21 (2)- Longview HS Tyler Legacy HS some notable changes include Duncanville, Berkner, Waxahachie and Forney being added to this area! In total, there are 26 bands meaning that at most, 5 bands can advance to state from this area

Dude, the competition for that 4th spot is gonna be INSANE

From the TMEA: https://align.tmea.org/align_2426/index.php

It's also worth noting that De Soto, Lakeview Centennial, Naaman Forest, and South Garland are all opting up from 5A, but I don't believe that all of the 30 schools will even send a band to UIL region or that they'll all get 1s, so it seems likely for 4 or 5 to state from this area. It looks like this area will be a champion toss-up between Forney and Waxahachie, with Rockwall, Duncanville, Sachse, Lakeview Centennial, and each of the RISD schools all vying for state spots, and there won't be a lot of those. These revamped B, C, and J areas are super tough!

McNeil H.S. from Austin is confirmed to be attending St. Louis.

Yeah, as a member of the Wylie East band, we aren’t exactly jumping for joy right now, but we’re prepared to fight for that spot when the time comes!

So, for those unaware, Area C kinda just got turned inside out. With the creation of the new Area J, the bands from regions 2, 24, and 25 are no longer in Area C, and now compete in Area J. This means Hebron, marcus, Flomo, Wylie, Wylie East (my school), Prosper, Allen, Plano isd, etc are no longer in Area C. The main Area C competitors in the new allignment are Waxahachie, the Forneys, the Rockwalls, and Berkner to name a few! The conditions in Area J are pretty unique, so i recommend checking out that topic! Happy marching😊!

Yeah, marcher from Wylie East here, and this is absolutely insane!!! Obviously there’s not much chance of anyone outside the Lewisville 3 getting state if theres only 3 spots, but we’re determined to pull ahead of Wylie and Prosper if there be a 4th. Thank you all for being so invested!

I really, really hope you’re right!! 🤞🏽

I just did a quick look at it looks like there will be 34 bands in this area now. I wouldn't be surprised if we can send 6 to state for the next two years maybe. Cleveland HS Caney Creek HS College Park HS Conroe HS Grand Oaks HS Oak Ridge HS The Woodlands HS Klein Cain HS Klein Collins HS Klein Forest HS Klein HS Klein Oak HS Magnolia HS Magnolia West HS Tomball HS Tomball Memorial HS Willis HS Aldine HS Avalos P - Tech School Carver HS Eisenhower HS Davis HS MacArthur HS Nimitz HS North Shore HS Atascocita HS Humble HS Kingwood HS Summer Creek HS New Caney HS King HS Dekaney HS Spring HS Westfield HS

Dang this is rough. I don’t want to make it seem like the LISD trio is completely untouchable but having only 3 or 4 state spots is going to be an uphill battle for a lot of programs.

I certainly would, especially if it meant I could rehearse more than 8 hours or start drill before Aug 1.

Wow if I was Prosper on a grand nats year… I’d opt out of UIL for a year if that’s still a possibility…

I was frankly hoping for more regions for marching band, as it stands Area J has FOUR state slots at BEST, with LISD in the area, Im sorry but that is such a stupid move to put them in the brand new area with only 3 regions being comprised of it, so you essentially are forcing the other 18 bands to compete for a SINGLE spot, if its even open with 2+ Dv.2s, while LISD floats to state every year cause the only school that has the potential to compete for top 3 would probably be Prosper given a couple years at best. I hope more changes come, because TMEA/UIL essentially just gave LISD a monopoly and are forcing 5+ state qualifiers that would place comfortably in the top 25 to compete for a single spot, which is not including like 2 dark horses that could really throw a curveball

welp i actually ended up being wrong about the rankings of the top tx guards dropping after this weekend. think y'all are right about the "brake pumping" on the scores. final standings will be released on Tues. grand oaks should still be 5th in A, Marcus will move up to 1st in open, if they're even going lol, why not Coppell too?? (that woulda been a huge shift from not even making semis last yr.) woodlands will actually move up w/ their 3-week old score into a 3rd place tie w/ Tarpon in world class. was really expecting all three of Carmel, fishers, and tarpon to squeak out 90s in finals w/ the double panels. maybe the fact that a few on the panel at mideast had seen tw kept the scores a little lower, two of those judges in particular gave some of the lowest scores at mideast. three weeks to go.

98.95 set by Avon in 2019. tho James Logan '05 is still *objectively* the best show in the class ever lol. in other news both Sac and Fuse overtake Paramount in the standings, close tho. my prediction of Fusion becoming the next new IW champ may come true a season sooner than i expected, helps that there isn't a Gaines show at the top of the mix this yr lol. we'll see, still kinda emotionally cold on Fusion's show but it's def fresher than the other two and has the best staging.

Avon with a 93.7 in prelims, which is massive, although at least a little more reasonable with 3 weeks left to go before they score nearly a 100 at Dayton. 😂 The only big issue I have with the SW results is the 87 to 89 gap between Fishers and Carmel. Much too large. Fishers is right up there with Carmel, and maybe even better. Besides that, the results look fine. Nice to see Bellbrook improve. They have some fans here. 👍

but it's thematic!!! the trudging along in our existences until we eventually die!!! lol

Top six in Scholastic World Finals will definitely be “Must Watch TV” (or even better if you can be in UD Arena!).