Rubisco

I mean Carmel was wonderful, but the performers impress me more than the show itself. I do appreciate the more intellectual approach to design. We don't see it as often. Actually, the most moving parts of the show come from piecing together the theme with what they do with the fabric (river of time) on the floor.

Avon was spectacular. Super clean, elegant, wonderful staging. They also move significantly better than any guard in the class, and blend that movement so well with the equipment. No, they don't have TWHS' top to bottom equipment talent, but the designers know how to MAXIMIZE what they do have. Fishers was also stellar. I could easily see them medaling at Dayton. Lovelier than you might expect from a baseball show. I also wasn't expecting them to be this strong after watching their marching show. Such a pleasant surprise! Yeah, folks, the top of the SW class is where it's at this year.

Those Open class scores at Mideast are definitely lower at the top than I would have guessed. Centerville and Noblesville are only a point higher than they were over a month ago at the Avon regional. I just watched Centerville and saw they gave a very strong performance. Judges might be pumping the brakes a little bit on the inflated scores. (Of course, I say that now, before Avon pops a 96 or something with three weeks to go.) Tarpon hitting a 90 in prelims is great. There was roughly the same gap between them and Warren Central as there was (over a month ago) at Avon between Fishers/Carmel, which seems like an improvement. They were scoring behind both of those guards, plus TWHS.

The Stuart, FL one-day regional Tarpon is attending instead actually has the more competitive SW lineup, with West Broward, Stoneman Douglas, and Warren Central (!) among others. I think the competition could help push Tarpon's score higher than if they went to the Southeast regional. I'm assuming they'll win the regional, which seems likely.

The Mideast and Southeast Power Regionals will be streamed on Flo starting tomorrow! Lots and lots of great winter guards. The upper classes will be especially strong. The Mideast one is practically a World Championships Finals preview in Scholastic World -- something like 9 out of the 10 units have a strong chance at making finals. Only what, two to three weeks left before the end of the season?

Ah, it might be another Cypress Woods situation, where they'll still listed on the current entries, but aren't actually attending. That would be a bummer!

Thank you, again, @Tubalord11, for your commentary! I've been violently ill all day. I wonder if it's COVID. I couldn't watch the Flo streams without feeling a bit of motion sickness. 😭🤢 I got about three into the A Class. I'm happy to see everyone did well. It's me, isn't it? I'm "some others." 😂

They're still missing. And it seems like the schedules were wiped out, too. I don't see them on the event pages. 🤔

Frankly, criticism is more interesting to read. Well, insightful criticism is, anyway. If the opinion is a lazily dismissive, "This show sucks!" it's even more useless than, "This show is amazing!" 😂

Thanks @Tubalord11 for the fantastic and positive commentary again! We all appreciate it! Already seeing some of those late-season shifts in these early prelims results. Union! And Coppell's A guard comfortably ahead after the first two rounds of Scholastic A! Is Coppell's program finally blooming, like we've been waiting for? At least competitively; we've loved the Open shows from the past couple years regardless of placements. Glad to hear Clear Brook seems to be making a comeback. I'll have to watch that one when I catch up. Their floor is quite striking -- reminiscent of their Creep floor from two years ago.

I had to look this up. I knew the show title was For Gabriel, but I let the show wash over me aesthetically and didn't really bother parsing the theme. I had no idea it's about a real-life child abuse/murder situation. I'm hesitant to use the word "exploitative" and call it a day, as it seems to imply the designers had nefarious motivations, like they sat around asking each other, "How can we use this dead child's awful story to score maximum points and manipulate the audience into crying?" Granted, any time you make art based on a true story, it's going to be at least a little exploitative. But I'd like to think the designers simply saw the Netflix documentary or whatever and were so moved by it that they thought it was an important story to tell. At the same time, I wish they had more of an actual personal connection to the story that they're telling. It's one thing to do a show "milking" Stanley Knaub's death for effect points (if you want to call it that 😂), because those designers back in 2004 had an actual relationship with Stanley. It's another thing to tell somebody's story when you don't have any direct connection to them and the person isn't a major public or historical figure. I think that's what cheapens Fantasia's concept a bit, and makes me wish they had gone with something else. All that said, I'm not offended in the slightest. It's quite difficult to offend me. And there are guard shows every year that are debatably of poor taste. Not unusual.

The Goddess of Guard. Truly, it's crazy to me that the biggest and best color guard program in the country, consisting of something like 200 students, is taught by only two full-time staff members, and that the director mostly designs and choreographs all FIVE competitive indoor shows herself -- even crazier when you take into account how dominant all 5 guards are. The two at the junior high level are undefeated (again) this season, with the varsity guard only clearly surpassed in talent by PDCMS's varsity (2-year program versus 3-year program). Meanwhile, all 3 guards at the high school level scored above an 85 the weekend of WGI Austin -- rarefied territory for the very beginning of March -- and are either obviously the best in the state in their respective classes, or very close to it. Unheard of. But then so was taking a non-finalist A guard to World class in less than two seasons right after being hired. Robbins is a VERY rare talent. And yet I still firmly believe that every guard everywhere would benefit from implementing similar changes to their feeder programs, like she did in 2019. You don't have to be a genius to reap the benefits of that.

I would LOVE that for Texas guard students. 😍 Some circuits hold late-season contests for individuals, but the participation rates for them are always abysmal -- not at all like the all-region/area/state process for band students, where pretty much every band in a region sends most of their kids, or at least the kids in their varsity concert bands. Curious what the "scales" and "etudes" would look like for guard auditions. Also whether there would be an actual All-State Guard performance at a convention. 🤔 Another big weekend for guard coming up. WGI returns to Texas with the Southwest Power Regional in Dallas and a "regular" two-day event in New Braunfels. The various Power Regionals will be streamed on Flo. I hope the Texas guards that are going to Dayton post some great numbers for the final standings. This season is going by so fast!

I didn't mean to trigger anyone with that comment. 😂 Definitely some valid points. We could probably have a whole new thread on WGI rules and committee-related stuff. I think if the A and Open (and non-finalist World) directors were really upset by the current structure and wanted to push for more representation, they'd probably just pull out of WGI, right? Make a point by spending their money elsewhere? Anyway, probably for another thread. I'd like to complain about talent poaching being the reason Houston doesn't have a top IW guard anymore, but I'm pretty sure it's because most kids leave Houston for college, or just because they want to live elsewhere. 😭

I think Dobyns-Bennett has potential, if they can clean the show. Most of the stuff they fumbled tonight seemed to be soloist or small ensemble moments. So, very exposed, but also probably easier to clean or change. Paramount has enough talent on the floor for two Independent World guards. Like others, I'm waiting for the show itself to click with me. That may take until Dayton, if it happens. I really enjoyed Etude. Obviously, they don't have the top-to-bottom talent Paramount has, but they maximize what they do have.

Hey, what's wrong with Schoenberg? Rhetorical question. Pretty sure I know the answer. 😄 I liked Holly Springs well enough.

Flo will be streaming the South Carolina Regional this weekend -- a two-day event. I'm especially looking forward to watching Paramount (reigning world champion), Etude, and Dobyns-Bennett. I've seen glimpses online already, but it will be nice to see how they've developed.

I think they were as well. It's true that you can't easily compare scores across the country, but with the seeding process, the expectation for WGI judges is that they take into consideration what they've already seen nationwide when assigning a score. (Obviously, that's very different from BOA, where scores are nearly meaningless when comparing across contests, besides maybe the box criteria -- but even then BOA's judges are inconsistent compared to WGI's.) Of course, with Dayton over a month away, much can change. I'm looking at the schedule. I don't see TWHS signed up for another regional, so that 85 will be their score for seeding. It doesn't matter so much for the SW class, because there are so few guards. But it will still bug me to see TWHS possibly seeded outside the top 5 going into Dayton, because it's so divergent from my own opinion having seen almost all the guards in the class. 🤷

I'm impressed by how they changed some of their show on the fly between prelims and finals. That front walkover toss after the opening ensemble rifle toss was not in the show in prelims. They had a nearby girl play substitute. The fact that they can just throw in such a difficult toss like that and have it be clean is really impressive. Much cleaner run. Honestly, their score in prelims was also too far off the top, even with the weaker run. I just don't see a 10 point gap between them and Avon, especially taking into consideration the depth of the talent on display in TWHS. I find their show astounding.

Some very interesting shows in SW over at the SoCal regional. Arcadia is doing Bjork this year. As you might imagine, it's a bit stranger than usual. Not quite as in love with it as their past two seasons. Chino Hills is doing a very charming Seuss show with an eye-catchingly colorful set design.

Ah, and an 83.6 for TWHS. That's not at all what they need here. Only a fraction of a point higher than their Houston score. Avon will be undefeated this season, if we didn't already know that. 😄

Seemed like a somewhat rough run for The Woodlands. Several exposed drops at the beginning, but they ended up pulling it together. In their defense, it's probably the hardest SW show ever from an equipment perspective.

I haven't watched much so far, so thanks @Tubalord11 for the updates! I'm backtracking on the stream right now to watch a few. I'm surprised to see Tarpon scoring lower than they did last week at FFCC. Well, sort of, considering how unreliable local scores are. I suspect they'll hit an 85 in finals at WGI Orlando, but that's still lower than Avon did 2 weeks ago. I'm not a huge fan of what I've seen from Tarpon this year, but that gap still seems kind of big.

Another big weekend for WGI! We'll get to see both the Austin and SoCal regionals on Flo. I can't wait to see what some of those California guards are bringing this year. I loved Arcadia's show last year. I'm wondering if they'll kick it up a notch again and stay top 5 at Dayton, or if Fishers will take their spot. I wish we were getting the Orlando regional on Flo. I'd like to see how Tarpon has developed. It'll be interesting to see how they and TWHS score in SW this weekend, as the distance between their scores and 90 may tell us by how much Avon will beat them at Dayton. 😂 Of course, I'm hoping for a little bit more competition at the top!

I liked Fusion well enough, but I'm not really sure what the point of the show is. It seemed a bit cerebral. I would have liked to have connected to it more emotionally. The performers were great, for sure, and there are some very cool moments in the staging.