Xenon

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I would love for there to be a military band in a 6A Area Finals! Kingwood 1998 at State Prelims was one of the most amazingly eye opening performances I'd seen. Won both 1st place marching votes.

Yes, the GE components are a much smaller percent of the rubric in UIL than most other contests, but I'm not sure that 10% is exactly true. A good portion of the Drill portion of the Marching sheet is also normally covered under GE, so maybe closer to 15%-20% for Marching. And the vast majority of the Musicianship (20%) portion is also normally dual covered in Performance and GE in many systems and each one of the other Music subcaptions also has an "Effective Use" portion. So maybe closer to 20%-25% for Music. All of this is extremely subjective, though, as many judges (especially those that cross systems) tend to meld some of the Performance and GE captions by themselves regardless of rubric because it is a human thing to be affected by real effectiveness.

Here is a document that provides an explanation of the judging sheets and rubrics for UIL Area and State: http://www.uiltexas.org/files/music/Revised_Area-State_Judges_Orintation_Webposting.pdf Also, if you really want to go deeper, all UIL Judges must go through the following training course as just a part of their training: https://judgesacademy.com/texas-area-and-state-marching-band-judges-training/ The course is just $25 and anyone can take it, even parents, students, and school administrators. In general, difficulty *is* taken into account, as are the Performance portions of GE such as suitability/compatibility of drill/music to the level of the performers (something super easy is not suitable for a top tier group), "Frequency of Movement while Playing", "Continuity and Flow", "Effective Use" of whatever you are doing, etc. As far as guard equipment, UIL tries not to demand that a band do certain things like use a particular style of marching, style of show, style or existence of guard, etc. and so those kind of equipment specifics are purposefully left off of the judging criteria. The idea is to judge based upon how well what is presented is performed and to give a ranking based upon the total level of achievement of the group, whether the group was military, show, corps, or whatever. And yes, doing harder things at 95% can be a higher total level of achievement than doing easy things at 98%.

Yes! For the first time ever, UIL State 4A and 6A will have Full Retreats after Finals!

All of the results are in! 6A Area A: 15 (Advance 3 to State) 6A Area B: 25 (Advance 5 to State) 6A Area C: 26 (Advance 5 to State) 6A Area D: 28 (Advance 5 to State) 6A Area E: 40 (Advance 8 to State) 6A Area F: 29 (Advance 5 to State) 6A Area G: 24 (Advance 4 to State) 6A Area H: 24 (Advance 4 to State) There will be 39 bands at 6A State Prelims which means there will be 12 bands in Finals on Wednesday.

6A Area B Schedule: http://www.texasmusicforms.com/regions/5/AreaMarching/2016%206A%20Area%20Schedule.pdf 9:45 - Weatherford 10:00 - Carroll 10:15 - MacArthur 10:30 - Plano 10:45 - Arlington 11:00 - Keller 11:15 - South Grand Prairie 11:30 - Nimitz 11:45 - Irving Break 1:00 - Timber Creek 1:15 - Bowie 1:30 - Plano East 1:45 - Haltom 2:00 - Fossil Ridge 2:15 - Sam Houston 2:30 - Trinity 2:45 - Lamar Break 3:15 - Martin 3:30 - Plano West 3:45 - LD Bell 4:00 - Duncanville 4:15 - Central 4:30 - Mansfield 4:45 - Coppell 5:00 - Paschal That is one heck of a last block! 6 very likely finalists just in the last block alone.

I've now updated everything that is available thus far.

Just real quick before I get into some deeper thoughts later today. At this point I've seen 19 of the 25 6A Area B bands and I think that Area B is going to be something like: 1-3: Bell, Duncanville, Keller (in some order) 4-6: Coppell, Haltom, Martin (in some order) 7-11: Carroll, Keller Central, Mansfield, Plano East, Timbercreek (in some order) (wouldn't be surprised to see any of these putting up a huge fight for the 5th or Alternate spot) There will also be some really good bands in the 11-13 range that would have made Area Finals in most other areas.

CTJ has chosen not to attend 6A State this year.

The TEA 8 Hour Rule is a State Law that requires that any extracurricular activity (not just Marching Band) cannot have non-classtime practice of more than 8 hours during the school week (start of school Monday morning to end of school Friday). However, it does not limit practice hours outside of that time, so you could practice as much as you want early Monday morning, Friday after school, or Saturday/Sunday in addition to the 8 hours allowed during the school week. The UIL Marching 8 Hour Rule only applies if you are going to attend a UIL Marching event at any time within the 2-year State cycle. It extends the restriction to 8 hours of non-classtime practice per calendar week plus an additional allowed hour on any performance day. Movement to/from the practice area does not count towards this time.

Sorry, I accidentally pulled from Prelims! I've corrected the post.

Guard: Keller Percussion: Newman Smith Music: Waxahachie Marching: Keller 1 - Keller 2 - Dripping Springs 3 - Waxahachie 4 - Coppell 5 - LV Berkner 6 - Keller Central 7 - Lake Ridge 8 - Southwest 9 - Trinity 10 - Newman Smith

Sorry, it's been super hectic up here getting ready for Finals! Percussion - Boswell Guard - Keller Winds - Keller Marching - Coppell GE - Keller Finalists (Reverse Prelims rank order): - Newman Smith - Trinity - Southwest - Lake Ridge - Keller Central - LV Berkner - Waxahachie - Coppell - Dripping Springs - Keller

Yeah, I'm here at the DMI, but I'm running the tabulation booth keeping track of all the judges' scores and comments and everything so I don't have enough time to run a blog, but I am tweeting pictures of everyone @txbands with #DMI2016. I'll also try and give some general commentary here in this thread later tonight or tomorrow.

The best place to get this kind of information from is UILForms.com That's where all the Regions executives manage the official UIL Region Marching and Concert lineups and results.

Westfield 2003 did exceed the UIL Marching 8hr Rule on a few weeks, but they never broke the TEA 8hr Rule which is State Law. They did not attend any UIL events that year so they were perfectly compliant with all rules and laws that applied to them. The next year, UIL changed the rules such that you must fully comply with the UIL Marching 8hr Rule for the entire season of both years of a State/Non-State rotation to be allowed to participate in UIL Marching events.

Westfield 2003 did have a few Saturday marathon rehearsals but Reagan stayed inside the UIL 8hr Rule and ended in 2nd by only 0.05.

I'd like to give a big thank you to our friends from IndianaMarching.com who are hosting the official BOA Live Blog for this event all through Friday and Saturday. The official BOA Live Blog is available at http://www.musicforall.org/blog/live-blog/live-blog-2016-bands-of-america-st-louis-super-regional-championship and I've also got it mirrored at http://live.txbands.com While most of the bands in Texas are having their UIL Region level contests this weekend, 4 TX bands have made the trip all the way up to Missouri for the BOA St. Louis Super Regional Presented by Yamaha, and all of them have Prelims performances on Saturday. 8:00am - Keller Fossil Ridge 10:45am - Richland 11:45am - Haltom 2:45pm - Birdville Prelims has 65 bands split across Friday and Saturday with a 14 band Finals Saturday evening, including the reigning 2015 BOA Grand National Champion, Broken Arrow. Since this is the last BOA event that Broken Arrow will attend before the 2016 BOA GN, there will be a special ceremony where they return Kevin, the BOA Grand National Champion Eagle Trophy so that he can get some rest in Indianapolis before moving on to his new home later this year. BTW, Kevin even has his own Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/KevintheEagle

On Friday, CTJ and Reagan go on at 5:00 and 5:30 respectively, so that may only be the last class of the day missed. Tuesday, how much school is missed depends on the Prelims slot. Wednesday, Definitely missing school assuming in State Finals. Probably missing all of Thursday and Friday. The question is why would one NEISD school choose to do skip State when the other isn't. The fact that Reagan is willing to do this schedule means that concerns of missing school didn't come from the school board.

BOA doesn't fully release that information. 10-12 Enrollment numbers change every year and the only way we officially know who is in what class is once awards are announced or recaps are released. If a band hasn't performed at a BOA event this year then we don't know for certain what class they are in.

I thought that the amount of singing in Cedar Ridge 2013 was absolutely perfect for that show.

There were years when Marcus or Flower Mound would have likely won the Eagle if they had gone to GN that year. No, it doesn't reduce the performance level of Carmel/Avon/etc, but it means that the total performance level of the contest as a whole wasn't as high as it could have been and that the GN Champion could have been different.

Things are starting to look up for Area B. All 7 of the Region 5 bands made 1's this year, including the 3 that made 2's last year! Congrats and thanks for all the hard work and dedication to growth! That means we only need the 3 Plano bands (OG, East, and West) to get 1's this Saturday and Area B will be advancing 5 bands to State.