Rubisco

Congratulations to all of the performers yesterday for great performances! And a special congrats to the following TX groups who made it into today's semifinals! Scholastic A: Rock Hill, Mount Pleasant, Burleson Centennial, Georgetown, Clear Brook, Pebble Hills, Wylie, and Southlake Carroll. Independent A: McKinney Boyd Independent and Eagle Mountain Independent Scholastic Open: McKinney, Little Elm, Friendswood, and Westlake Independent Open: Undaunted, Glory Independent, and ORIGINS Open Scholastic World: Moe and Gene Johnson and The Woodlands Independent World: Invictus, ORIGINS, and Mirage.

Tomorrow is the first day of the 3-day WGI World Championships in Dayton, Ohio for the color guard division. Wishing everyone safe travels and great performances! Have fun and make some lasting memories! Based on the scores leading up to this event, it seems like almost all the classes will be pretty competitive this year, which is exciting. The audience is in for a treat!

I think they were actually 2nd or 3rd in the seeding. I believe Centerville was 1st. I'd have to look that up. Either way, cute show! Fierce performers, too.

I'm taking a look at the results from the SFWGA (South Florida) championships, which is probably the last major event before Dayton. Finals wrapped up yesterday; prelims was a week ago. The most interesting result: West Broward came out on top over Stoneman Douglas in both prelims and finals. That's a shift from Palm Beach a few weeks ago, although the scores there were close. In finals, WB bested SD by nearly 2 points, with a panel that was all active WGI judges. Scores in the upper 80s, thank goodness. World Finals should be a lot stronger this year.

That College Park show is captivating. Very ethereal, with subtle crescendos in the music that they illustrate beautifully. Have you seen the film, Ponyo? It kind of reminds me of that, with the jellyfish and the serene piano and strings.

I still think it could be between Tarpon and TWHS, although it is difficult to bet against Avon and Carmel, given their consistent success. I'm hopeful TWHS will get some sort of medal again. That state video is making me more confident about that, at least, although I'm sure the others are polishing their shows as well.

Okay, sorry, I lied. There are more than just two guard circuits in Texas! It's just that the other two big ones don't get the attention they deserve. Here are the results from the West Texas Color Guard Association: https://recaps.competitionsuite.com/66484947-aba0-4d70-a956-ae9e19736186.htm And here are the two results from the Texas Educational Color Guard Association, which provides opportunities for South Texas guards: South Zone: https://recaps.competitionsuite.com/55a4b7d5-8191-411f-9c52-e0737e998e18.htm And North Zone: https://recaps.competitionsuite.com/748fc6e8-904a-4577-b1e1-b98fe793fd16.htm

Alrighty, it looks like both state contests in Texas have wrapped up. You can find the NTCA results here: https://recaps.competitionsuite.com/199462ea-d8d5-4aae-b21e-99a273226400.htm And the TCGC results here: https://recaps.competitionsuite.com/0ab02aaf-dc5f-461e-9b51-2ba63974bc34.htm Congratulations to all participating guards! And if your season ended this weekend, thank you thank you THANK YOU for all of the hard work you put in this season. We really appreciate what you do, and hope that you had fun and made some great memories this year. To those units going to Dayton, keep up the good work! We can't wait to see you shine on the national stage in a couple weeks!

The NTCA retreat isn't until 9:30. It looks like they're doing all of the classes today without a second day.

How is it? Did you catch any of the National As? Any favorites?

Okay, the prelims rounds at the TCGC Scholastic National A contest have wrapped up. Three rounds total. I believe they take 15 finalists to tomorrow's finals event. So, those would be the following (with asterisks next to the round winners): Clear Brook 90.4* The Woodlands JV 89.13 Cypress Woods 88.45* Louis D. Brandeis 87.88 Rouse 87.49 Oak Ridge 87.36* Pearland 87.16 New Braunfels 86.16 Hays 86.07 Georgetown 86.05 William B. Travis 84.65 Lake Travis 84.36 Grand Oaks 84.10 Cedar Park 83.74 Shadow Creek 83.06 Hopefully I did that right. I'm surprised Katy didn't make the cut after doing so well in WGI. It looks like 3 of the 5 judges had them 3rd in their block, including both IA judges, but DA and one of the GE judges had them much, much lower, which booted them out of finals entirely. On the other hand, I'm guessing the perspective of the upstairs judges at Reed Arena is much different than what they've had until now. I'm sure the seating goes up way higher.

Life is unfair! But really, all those kids are putting in A LOT of time. They've definitely earned their success.

My thoughts are the same as they were last year when we had this conversation. It would really behoove all Texas guards to invest in their middle school programs and try to get those feeders to add a color guard class during the school day for PE credit. That's how Palm Desert Charter Middle School runs things, and it's obviously hugely beneficial. And why stop at middle school? Go on and add some elementary school color guard programs, too. We can have The Little Belles AND The Little Coppells. 😉 Okay, I tried. 😂

This confused me for many years. I would always say, "Screw the 8 hour rule! Drop out of UIL!" But unfortunately, it's not that simple. It's a more general regulation from the TEA Commissioner of Education. All in all, I do think a lot of educators probably appreciate the 8 hour rule, even if it's a competitive disadvantage. Just like it does for students, it prevents extracurricular rehearsals from totally consuming educators' lives!

My apologies. I got a bit distracted. 😄 Is anybody here going to be attending the NTCA or TCGC championships this weekend?

@packwick Please check your DMs, when you get the chance! Thank you!

I'm curious how you think that particular group will play out. It seems like you've seen the most recent performances. The scores are very close this year in both World classes. When's the last time there was a tie at the top for both IW and SW? That might be a first. Also, do you have an ETA on those videos? 😉🤤

Friendswood got reclassed after week 6?! Ugh, that's rough. And pretty unexpected based on the early trajectory of their season. They were literally last place in finals in equipment at Houston. And what happened to Jordan? I don't see them in the Open seeding anymore. Did they pull out of Dayton or successfully appeal their Open reclassification? I thought NTCA was going to have their championships streamed on Flo, but that no longer appears to be the case. So, no streaming of either of the main Texas championships. That's disappointing. It doesn't look like TCGC is doing their typical double panel of judges, either. I only see 5 listed. Must be a cost-cutting year!

And how about Palm Desert Charter Middle School scoring an 85 in Open, nearly matching Mt. Carmel (currently seeded 3rd nationally), after being promoted from A Class -- wow, that's impressive! Actually, they're pretty much scoring the exact same as they would have been expected to score if they had stayed in the A Class. It really does make you wonder just how distinct the classes are, and/or maybe question the consistency of WGI's judging in general. The paradigm the judges use to rate guards (supposedly) shifts to a higher level for an Open guard, so we'd expect scores to drop compared to scores achieved in the A class. Clearly that isn't always the case! It's also a little interesting that the top A guards from last year's Dayton, like Somerset Academy and Brownsburg, are dominating in the Open class right now. That's not unheard of, but I'm wondering if the pandemic has made the barrier between classes that much more porous. That, and classes have always been more of a folk wisdom than an exact science.

I've had a very busy day between the guard contest in the morning and activities with my brother in the afternoon/evening. I'm totally exhausted, but it was worth it. The guards at Clear Creek were outstanding! Congratulations to our National A champ, Clear Brook! One of my favorites this year, for sure. I'll try to catch up on the out-of-state guards tomorrow. Looking at the scores, I'm surprised to see Tarpon trailing Carmel, but if Carmel is as clean as I've heard, then that would explain that. Different contests, of course, but those two seem to be in a more similar range than expected. A Tarpon win might not be a forgone conclusion. What we can say is that Carmel widened their gap over Avon considerably today. TWHS will also likely land somewhere in the top 4 again, although it's harder to tell where without a late season WGI score -- which I'm sure would have been too close to the others to tell anything anyway. Pride of Cincinnati is currently trailing both Blessed Sacrament and Paramount. We'll see what happens after finals tomorrow. Those three will likely be close at Dayton. Onyx looks to be closer to Fusion, so there could be an interesting fight for 4th.

At Clear Creek! 🥰

It's possible! I thought all the As at Dallas looked mostly like As, but the Steering Committee might think differently. I'm assuming you have a video? Will you upload it onto the drive?

Well, the good news is that Friendswood, Southlake Carroll, and Clear Brook will shoot right up to 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place in the national standings. The bad news is that I think pretty much all of the Scholastic Open guards in Texas will drop a bit. Hopefully they can turn it around at Dayton!

A Make-A-Wish Foundation performance. Christ, I'm still laughing at that. 😂 Now every time I see some horribly misclassed guard, I'm going to think of that. "Oh, they must be cancer patients!" I think the guard probably would have been scored a 100 in exhibition had that been the case. 😂

Oh, I'd audition in a heartbeat!