takigan

Depends on what role the head director played in the program. Did he/she do a lot of the teaching and delegate the grunt work to the assistants and other staff, or did the director assume more of the role of administrator and let the rest of the staff do a lot of the teaching? Maybe the real power behind the throne was one or two extremely talented assistants that basically ran everything while the head director took it upon themselves to make things as easy for them as possible. Maybe they saw the marching and concert programs as 2 separate entities and divided the work load? I think for many programs that retain their competitive edge after the head leaves....the REAL head director for the group in question is in fact still at the school, so nothing really changes as a result. And for programs that essentially collapse after the head leaves, despite having a pretty expansive staff...maybe the guy was a great teacher who had a crappy eye for hiring assistants.

Indiana had 5 bands make it 1981 and 6 bands make it in 1984 (BOA wasn't as much of a national organization yet, and mostly recruited local programs). Several states have had 4 bands make it (Indiana and Texas have both done this several times, as has Florida, Ohio, Illinois and I think New York), but never more than 4 bands from 1 state have made it since 1984. I agree that it would be cool to change this.

If 8 Texas bands attended, that would be the most to ever attend Grand Nationals. The current record is 7 from 2007. Bell, Richland, SFA, The Woodlands, Mabank, Reagan and Clear Brook all made the trip that year. 6 of them made semi-finals (all but Mabank) and 4 made finals (Bell, TWHS, Richland & SFA). That was the year LD Bell won it all. My personal favorite year for Nationals, and also the first year I watched the GN webcast.

Not to mention a tie for 5th/6th while being only 1 point behind 3rd/4th! Those 4 bands could've gone any which way.

2 Bell HS, Hurst 8 7 6 3 3 27 LD Bell received a ranking of 8th, 7th and 6th from the 3 music judges. They received 3rd place from both marching judges and the running total of the numbers from all 5 judges is 27. Lowest number = 1st place. And so on....

haha, Dan, considering you've seen more shows this season than practically everyone here I figured you'd've posted a much bigger list....But I guess that must say a lot about Fredricksburg's show

Ironic choice of words .

Also keep in mind that "North" Texas pretty much ends at Denton. There's nothing in Texas further north than that .

So State is in full swing and pretty much everyone has taken the field in competition at some point or another now....What are some of your favorite shows that you've seen? Posting videos is encouraged Posting your own school's show is tacky. Hiding your school info in your profile and then posting your school's show is even more tacky I'll start: Cedar Ridge - Friendswood - (not the best quality video...definitely going to want to watch in 720p. The bit from "Last of the Mohicans" is really cool!) Clear Falls - (I love the way they filmed and edited this video...I wish more videos had this) The Woodlands - Argyle - Mr. Lemish (Argyle director) posted a very good video of Argyle that someone linked to....but the video had originally been set to private so I don't think he meant for all of us who saw it to see it. He has since taken it down and there are currently no others on Youtube to link to. Hopefully there will be one soon. It's an awesome show! TxB thread discussing Argyle's show

Are you saying the current "regular" BOA Regionals would serve the role of being qualifying rounds for the Super Regional? If that's the case that wouldn't work either....because, again first off, it doesn't align with what BOA is all about and what these Regionals are all about. BOA's vision is to include as many band programs in their activities as is financially and logistically possible. This is why there are like 10 Regionals within 500 miles of Indianapolis and only a scattering of them in the Western United States. The Lone Star State Has Lots of Bands....but the Great Lakes Megalopolis is the most heavily populated area of the U.S. and they too have lots of bands.....just not as good as ours Also, if only the 10 bands each that made finals at Denton, Conroe [and the hypothetical Austin] were allowed to compete in San Antonio, that would mean San Antonio would only have 30 bands tops (and that's if all of them wanted to go....many of them wouldn't). Even if they included the Finalists from the Utah and California Regionals, hardly anyone from those Regionals would bother coming because of the insane expense. San Antonio would flop because 30 bands isn't enough to justify the cost of running an Alamodome contest.

For the current students/directors/parents, how many separate "pages", "direction changes" (including halts) or the umbrella term "SETS" does your school's full show have this year? No need to open up those drill books and count up the exact number. Ballpark figures are fine

I'm....not really following you here. MFA's vision becomes even more pronounced for the more extravagant Super Regionals and Grand Nationals. Besides.....UIL runs the Area Regionals....BOA runs their stuff and they use entirely different judging systems and have different philosophies for using those judging systems. Using a UIL Area contest as a qualifier for a BOA Super Regional isn't even close to the realm of a possibility...it's not fair and it's not even the slightest bit practical. I don't even think BOA would be able to meet their 45-band minimum for designating one of their contests a "Super Regional" if they introduced restrictions for attending. And if they don't have a certain number of attendees, they lose money due to less participants spending money in the Alamodome.....The costs of running that Regional in the dome are huge! BOA is a national organization....it is not in their interests at all to involve a local circuit like UIL into how they do business....especially if it's a risk in them facing another financial crisis like they did a few years back.

From my previous post: "...and would also pull a lot of bands from a lot of the local Austin and SA contests; the ones that have no interest in driving 2-4 hours for a simple invitational, BOA or not." That was the point I was really getting at, though I admit it doesn't look entirely clear. You're not entirely wrong.....but the bands that attend SA do so for all sorts of reasons....Your theory only applies to maybe 1/3 of the bands in attendance.....While many 3A and 5A bands used this as a warmup for today and tomorrow (State), most of the other bands are there for no other reason than that it's just a "really big band competition". Most will choose SA over an Austin Regional, but the point is that some won't....and you only need to swing a half dozen tops to solve your overcrowding problem. And I didn't really mention this in my previous post, but BOA's decision to open new regionals often has more to do with attracting new prospects than it does relieving overcrowding. If they did open another regional, "attracting new bands" would be priority number one with "relieving overcrowding" being a distant second. This would never happen because it doesn't fit the vision of Music for All. BOA competitions are celebrations as much as they are competitions.....they want to give everybody the chance to compete in an exciting venue. This is why Grand Nationals is open to everyone and doesn't require a "qualifying round". Most fans don't really care about the multitude of smaller less successful schools, but MFA does....that's why they go out of their way to provide participation awards, exhibition performance opportunities, class achievement awards, spirit awards and other methods/awards to include as many bands as possible in the festivities.....not just the insanely good ones. They try to do this as much as possible without detracting from the excitement of the competition side of it. Another member last year posted in the BOA San Antonio 2011 thread about BOA being a big moneygrabbing scam and suggested radical adjustments to the contest proceedings to save bands money. The poster saw BOA San Antonio as nothing more than a competition, to where it's in the attendees' best interests to leave early and cut costs if they don't make finals.....I insist that it's a festival and event to where you should make a trip of it regardless of how you place: http://www.txbands.com/forums/index.php?s=...ost&p=81251

Friendswood @ 22nd isn't too surprising. They're only a little behind College Park and they placed ahead of SFA and Hendrickson.....for a band that just missed Finals at the early season Regional, getting around 20th at SA is to be expected. Hendrickson and Cedar Ridge are the ones that really surprise me though. I mean if Hendrickson hadn't gotten 5th at Conroe (which I found surprising personally), I wouldn't be surprised by 29th at all (that's about where I would have had them if we were talking in the preseason). Cedar Ridge though.....all the signs were pointing to this being their breakout year. SFA placing in the 20s seems a little surprising too....especially since they were able to make Finals at Conroe. And Anderson.....they lost by only 1 place to freaking UNION (OK) (a GN Finalist) at St. Louis! (and they beat Richland!). I don't understand how they can drop that much after being at that level only a couple weeks ago without utterly stopping their progress, or just having an absolutely horrible run.

If they added a 4th Regional, it would be a standard Regional like Arlington or Conroe, and like Arlington and Conroe it would be limited to 30 bands. Every Super Regional that BOA hosts is always held in a dome and is "capped" at 60. I put caps in quotes because MFA tends to bend the rules in some situations....it's not in anyone's best interest to turn a band away, though BOA has to think about its contest staffing situation to be able to best provide a positive experience for everyone involved.....this becomes harder when they go over their anticipated attendance limits. 25 would probably be quite a realistic number to expect for an Austin Regional, actually. Maybe less. I'll explain in just a sec. Keep in mind the goal here isn't simply to split San Antonio. All 3 Regionals are operating near their enrollment limits. The Austin bands--and also the SA bands like Johnson, Reagan and Churchill (among a few others) that drive 4-5 hours to Houston or Dallas to do an early season Regional-- are divided between these 2 Regionals. An Austin Regional would pull most of the Austin/SA bands from the early season Regionals....it wouldn't draw many but it would draw a few of the Austin bands that want to compete in BOA that have been driving to SA for the Super Regional that would choose a local regional over a 2 hour drive....and would also pull a lot of bands from a lot of the local Austin and SA contests; the ones that have no interest in driving 2-4 hours for a simple invitational, BOA or not. 2012 Attending Band totals: San Antonio - 62/60 Conroe - 27/30 Arlington - 33/30 If there were an Austin Regional this year this might have been a possible split: San Antonio - 57/60 (-5) Conroe - 24/30 (-3) Arlington - 26/30 (-6) Austin - 14/30 So the totals subtracted from each Regional becomes the Austin Regional. But then add in another 6-10 bands that would have attended Westlake, or Vista Ridge or USSBA or the dozen other smaller contests in the Area depending on which week they put it on, and Austin might break 20 (which is a solid attendance total for a Regional by MFA's standards).

I think a regional at The Palace in Round Rock would be awesome. Great stadium and centrally located between the other 3 regionals.

Super Regionals limit their number of participants to 60. Music For All painstakingly chooses its event venues (including opening new ones, moving locations for current ones, and canceling ineffective ones) with anticipation to how many programs will sign up to get this as close to maximum as possible without going over the limit. If they anticipate going WAY over the limit, they often just open up another regional to split things up. Having 62 bands at San Antonio this year along with what was also a sizeably large turnout at Arlington might cause BOA to consider adding a 4th Regional to Texas (as they have done in the past... with unfortunately little success) for next year. They would choose this course of action long before they ever made San Antonio a 3-part event (Prelims-Semis-Finals) like Grand Nationals instead of 2 (Prelims-Finals).

DFW population - 6.6 million Houston population - 6 million Austin population - 1.8 million San Antonio population- 2.2 million I think this explains the difference in area allocations per metro, though it doesn't really explain why Austin gets its "own area" while San Antonio is more split up. TMEA has Austin split up more than UIL splits up San Antonio. At least that's my general impression, I'm not at a computer right now to be able to verify that statement...but yeah.

Clocked it at 188-192 BPM Wow..... Double Helix, Circle Drill, Jazz Running....probably some other drill vocabulary terms I'm missing but it's all here...and at a deadly tempo too. Amazing. Reminds me of mid-2000s Hebron or Richland. Edit: Oh, and the Cavaliers. The whole drum break reminds me of Samurai, plus they've got the 2002 dance groove and of course, the Double Helix.

Agreed. The 80s were about the pandhandle, the 90s about Houston and the past decade til now; DFW. In the panhandle's heyday, Texas Tech and West Texas State (now A&M) were also in their golden years during that time (1980s), under Dean Killion/James Sudduth and Gary Garner respectively.

Reposting for archive.

No breakdown......but here's the results for both Prelims and Finals. EDIT: All good.

Reposting results here for the archive since UIL doesn't keep them posted on the region sites forever

Marching judging was very consistent in prelims. There were only 5 instances of the 2 judges being more than 10 ranks apart across 42 bands. Music judging was all over the place. 7 instances of divergence by 20 places or more: 3rd & 29th for Lopez 3rd & 28th for San Benito 11th & 33rd for Sharyland 9th & 36th for Edinburg North 7th & 33rd for McAllen 11th & 39th for J.P Stevens 17th & 40th for Marshall

Since these links won't stay fresh forever, Ima put them in the TxBands Freezer