abtwitch

I've been working with Westwood as a tech this past week and all I can say is that the director change is not setting us back like I predicted. That being said, Westwood is out for blood and the sounds they are making at this point in the season are better than ever and the drill is more complicated than normal. Unless other schools are making similar strides, Westwood is gonna be far more of a player than any year before.

Don't forget BOA San Antonio and UIL State, they're in town

http://www.uiltexas.org/files/music/6A_Area_D_Prelims.pdf You can change "Prelims" to "Finals" and "D" to any other area (capitalization does matter).

I second this proposal

I really think Bentonville scores were just really inflated, it's very unlikely that every group there improved their scores by 2 or 3 points from the night before. Also take into account that the judging panel was incomplete compared to Midwestern and the gaps between the corps at Bentonville all shifted up with each other. If anything, Phantom is closer to Crown now than last night. And don't forget the #1 rule of DCI: don't compare scores from different competitions. It can be helpful sometimes but until the corps go head to head again, there really is no telling how they'll size up against each other.

What rehearsals are you going to? I'm probably gonna stop by Boston and Bluecoats before heading to the dome. This question is extended to everyone, I'd love to meet some of you guys.

yeah, they were on a downward trend for quite a while, but then they recovered, and it was a very strong recovery given the and I was really happy for you guys!

Keep in mind that BOA McAllen and San Antonio have very, VERY, different levels of competitiveness. Juarez-Lincoln placed a solid 6th in McAllen, but 47th at San Antonio. Alexander placed behind Juarez-Lincoln by a few points, so they probably won't even have broken top 50 at San Antonio if they had decided to go. Of course, they could make some big leaps going into this year, so we shouldn't count them out completely, but I do think you may be underestimating the competitive level of San Antonio.

Potential appearance from a school I have close connections to... 2019 or 2021 as I've been told by a friend...

Area B and to an extent D are why the UIL system needs to be overhauled. The massive amount of great bands across the state is continuing to grow and is beginning to outgrow the system.

Tyler Jacks (graduate of my alumni too) is taking an assistant spot at Abilene High School. Knowing him personally, I wouldn't count Abilene out of area finals. Funny thing is that my roommate's dad is now his boss, being the principle there. I'll definitely be dropping by a football game or something to check them out!

The 3rd director has been announced, Brandon Winters (was a tech for a bit while I still went there), director at Jack C. Hays, is taking that spot. Turpin was the main catalyst to Westwood's growth as a marching band; so Green's absence, while he'll be greatly missed, will probably not have any direct changes to the marching program.

This Cruel Moon/Wine-Dark Sea Mvt II by John Mackey I think would make an absolutely stunning ballad, it's the neglected movement of Wine-Dark Sea.

I don't know much about Harker Heights, but it would take an insane amount of improvement for them to make state with 8 (CTJ, Reagan, Churchill, Round Rock, Cedar Ridge, Westwood, Hendrickson, and Bowie) state contenders/finalist locks and then an already insane amount of bubble bands (McNeil, Anderson, New Braunfels, Hays, Austin, Madison, Belton, etc.). I do hope that Belton does well this year, I've been rooting for them myself. With this much competition, I'm gonna be surprised regardless of who makes finals. I personally think they should take more finalists (7 -> 10, 10 -> 12) and more state qualifiers (1 in 5 -> 1 in 4) to compensate for the exponential growth of marching band programs in the state. Then you get into scheduling difficulties and blah blah blah...

And with BOA SA and possibly State as well. Can't wait to see how they do!

That's what I was thinking, but the fact that they're so close is what has me curious

I was just looking at last year's enrollment reports and Rouse is losing a pretty big class (603) and the other classes only add up to 1246 (BOA AAA starts at 1251). Could we potentially see a new AA competitor? It's honestly up to whether more people come or leave the area before the fall. There are some other bands that are on the line, but this is the most notable one I've seen so far.

Just heard Westwood at their incoming freshman event yesterday, so much energy, even already. I forgot the name of their arranger, but they have crafted something I think everyone here will appreciate very much.

I guess I'm a bit biased coming from a upper mid-tier band like Westwood, but I get a bit of fatigue from the idea of BOA San Antonio. Almost the top groups go every year, so the all of the finalists (bar 1 or 2) are locks. Unlike Grand Nats or other super regionals, there isn't as much variety in finalists as I'd hope. Sure with grand nats, you have the bands that are more or less guaranteed a spot whenever they go, but the attendance changes year to year enough so that you're always excited to see different groups perform year to year. I'm not saying there is no variety, just not as much as I'd hope. You can see this same effect in other Texas regionals, especially Austin where the all the 2016 finalists returned in 2017 and the same for this next fall. DFW and Houston aren't quite there yet, but they are on that track. I'm glad they're adding more regionals (McAllen starting in '15, Midland '17, and Waco '18) so that bands like Westwood who have trouble making it into the their regional contest finals get a chance to shine. I'm not really mad, I think the depth of Texas bands is great, but reading about how really the only last slot of finals is up for question is bothersome. My dream would to boost up the number of finalist bands, but that's unrealistic when it comes to time for super regionals. Or we could literally take the Grand Nats format and officially make San Antonio BOA Grand Nationals South, giving those excellent bands at least the ability to say "advanced to semi-finals" and attracting more great bands from nearby (Broken Arrow, Union, Lafayette, Clovis, etc.) to mix things up a bit more. tl;dr Texas is big and great, just it might be too much for a single super regional

I'm excited for actual competition for the AA champion, on top of last year's Southwest, we have Pioneer and Camdenton. I really wish BOA would draw in more smaller-sized schools in Texas, they really only pull from smaller 5A schools. If we could get North Lamar, Argyle, China Spring, etc. to come to BOA, that would be very fun! Edit: thought Camdenton was AAA at first

Both Tom Glenn and Weiss moved up to 5A, and I think this is Tom Green's first Senior class and Weiss' first Junior class. Regardless, I hope to see both bands to continue to grow!

Locks: Claudia Taylor Johnson Seven Lakes Brazoswood Pioneer Roma Lower Half: Hanna Edinburg North Westfield Juarez-Lincoln United Bubble: Alexander Sharyland Lehman Edinburg Not super well versed in South Texas, so feel free to call me wrong on a few of these, but this is my personal prediction

Bands to look out for: Berkner Cedar Park Cypress Falls Dripping Springs James Martin Keller Central Marcus North Shore Pflugerville Hendrickson Round Rock Rouse Sandra Day O'Connor Southwest Wakeland Waxahachie Westlake Westwood Gees, this contest is already looking to be super intense. Wish I could go sooooo bad, but I can't. I'll have to stream it :/

I've got my eyes on Belton, personally. With their new director from Round Rock and the fact that they are attending both BOA Austin and Conroe on top of TMC, I'm excited to see where they end up at Area. I expect them to exceed people's expectations, even if they don't make finals.

Nah, no offense taken. I actually showed it to a friend whose lived here his whole life. He was like "as a longtime resident of Abilene... I completely agree"