Dog885

Best wishes from this Vista Ridge dad. I hope Team Texas wrecks shop in Indy this fall.

Bands Of America has announced that BOA Waco will be at McLane Stadium at Baylor!

Vista Claudia Leander Mound - Massive Matador Monsters

Somebody gets me.

All starting with "M" and single words  conspiracy 

Bands Of America has announced that BOA Waco will be at McLane Stadium at Baylor!

Let's just hope the rain doesn't have Waco on theirs.

They aren't expecting to make finals.  They are coming more for the experience and to sit and watch finals.  And to enjoy the Alamo and the Riverwalk.  It will be a different experience for those Utah kids, but I sure am excited for them to get this opportunity!  Can you imagine coming to BOA SA for the first time EVER and not being from Texas?  We gotta make sure to cheer VERY loudly for these kiddos!!

That sounds very interesting. I would like to see a battle of the Westlakes

I’ll definitely be at a few events this season

On a related note, Anderson has brought back an indoor drumline program and we'll be competing in TCGC at Bowie (Feb. 2), Cedar Park (Feb. 23), Akins (Mar. 2), and State is April 6th.

Fun Fact:
Waco Regional will be held at the drive-thru of a Bush’s Chicken.

We've been doing Hawaii every 4 years for a bit instead

I haven't seen enough shows to really know what's the best, but my personal favorite I've seen live was Lincoln 2017 at St Louis. Such a fun show.

It's kind of unfair that some of the greatest Texas shows never got to flesh themselves out in a GN appearance (Marcus '07, Marcus '12, CTJ '14, FloMo '16), but considering Flower Mound's state performance was only 3 days before GN Finals and the show likely peaked a little before that, I really feel safe saying FloMo '16 is the best performance given by an American HS band.

Oh, silly me. I thought this was a brand new topic, I should really look at the dates.

I think we need to approach this topic with a little less Texas pride and a bit more respect for the top programs in the country. While I’m still confused as to why Blue Springs, Tarpon Springs or Broken Arrow didn’t win last night, I have to recognize that the top two bands obviously have reached a pinnacle that few Texas bands can say they’ve reached. There’s a reason Carmel and Avon took first and second, and we need to focus more on what those reasons are and spend less time posturing and saying how great we are. Don’t get me wrong...WE ARE GREAT! But we have not yet reached that level of profoundly superb quality marching and playing that Carmel and Avon simply have oozing out of their pores. Not to mention how insanely talented their guards are. Now I do think we are catching up. And I do think Texas brings something different and equally profound to the table. But we need to not let arrogance keep us from learning from the very best.
 
One more point and then I’ll hush. While I definitely think we can learn a lot from the top bands in the Grand Nationals arena, I also think Texas makes the mistake every time they take a band to nationals, of trying to appeal to the Indy audience. I think we tone down our Texas style shows a bit in fear of not placing well with the Indiana judges. Historically, the shows Texas has taken to GN have not been our very best shows. Yes there have been exceptions, like LD Bell in 2007, TWHS in 2013 and Hebron, who should have won in 2015. But for the most part, we don’t take our phenomenal shows to Indy. Like FloMo in 2016. Or CTJ 2017. Those types of shows are what we need to show the Indy fans. Let’s stop trying to please Indy judges, learn what we can from the very best, put our Texas swagger to work, and take some winning shows to Grand Nats in the coming years! In fact, 2019 would be a fine place to start.

Thank you all for posting results and scores! This was the Central Catholic band’s first time participating in a contest finals in at least the last 20 years, so we were really happy to be in such good company.

So lately I've been having band pop up everywhere in my life. A couple weeks ago while staying up late I wrote, "DNA is only found in 6A bands" instead of Eukaryotes. Then last Wednesday I wrote, "Clay chartered the Second National Band of America" in AP US History. Finally I had a dream a couple nights ago where a few band kids from my school moved to Flower Mound and I asked them to give a flower petal and say hi to my friend who goes to Carmel, not FloMo, then we were in a really wide charter bus to a competition. I don't know what's wrong with me if anything, but this is getting a little strange.

During prelims results, I wrote all of them down in my phone’s notes, because USBands doesn’t like posting them.
 
Group 1
2nd 80.5875 Moody
1st 83.775 (all captions) Central Catholic and Providence
 
Group 2
2nd 86.850 (music guard) Grandview
1st 88.215 (visual GE perc) Troy
 
Group 3
4th 87.6375 Crockett
3rd 88.7 Waco
2nd 89.425 (GE guard perc music tie) Cedar Creek
1st 90.3625 (visual music tie) Veterans Memorial
 
Group 4
8th 89.2875 Bastrop
7th 89.6875 John Marshall
6th 90.0875 Akins
5th 92.775 Lockhart
4th 93.2 (guard) Georgetown
3rd 94.8 (music GE) LBJ
2nd 95.2125 Judson
1st 95.75 Sharyland (visual)
 
Group 5
1st 95.550 (all captions) Brennan
 
Group 6
2nd 93.0875 United South
1st 94.2625 (All captions) Anderson
 
Finalists
Central Catholic and Providence
Troy
Veterans Memorial
Brennan
United South
Anderson
Akins
Lockhart
Georgetown
LBJ
Judson
Sharyland

To me it seems like the simple solution would be to just not compete in BOA if you (or your school/band/district) are not a fan of the way things are run. BOA has classifications for smaller schools, but yes a large part of the scoring is based on visual impact and many smaller schools do not have the same resources that make visual impact as easy as large props or well designed shows.
Instead of wishing that classic marching bands could be compared objectively in the same competitions as contemporary bands, just allow BOA to exist and allow UIL to exist as separate entities. There are also many competitions that are specifically for smaller schools who do not put on productions as much as marching demonstrations.
Plenty of schools that compete in BOA THRIVE off it and grow their programs, and more importantly their kids love for music and the marching arts. BOA is doing an amazing job of impacting kids in the marching world, however schools that do not conform to the contemporary style for whatever reason shouldn’t be expected to. Just don’t go to BOA. UIL will recognize a military program if they perform at a high level.

I have not heard anything about any one getting fired or a program using ineligible students. I deal with these rumors every single year. I'm sorry but this will need a better source than, "Some band mates told me."

I have a radical idea that I came up with of without much though and I don't know if it would work. Olympic diving has a system where they scrap the highest and lowest two ordinals/scores that were achieved by a diver and the remaining 3 scores are added together (then multiplied for difficulty, but I don't think that's necessary for band) to get their final score. What if UIL did a similar system?

UIL is designed to encompass a large swath of marching band cultures throughout this state.  Cultural aspects that most of us aren't aware of.  I think many of our forum readers would be shocked to learn that well over a hundred schools in this state march 7th graders at halftime and UIL marching competitions (not that that in itself has anything to do with the scores, it's just an illustration).  But in the end there is one predominant marching culture that has been trying to assert itself on the system...The DCI system...it views itself as superior to all the other cultures, and has slowly worked it's way into nearly every circuit.  It is an evolving system, which means that any kind of system that prides its culture on tradition, then that crap has to go. As long as this culture continues to exert itself on the UIL judging system there is going to be conflict and confusion of vision and philosophy that skews the scores.  UIL cannot be allowed to cater only to the DCI-style purely because DCI views itself to be an evolving system.

There's also the whole thing with it bankrupting bands.  No, you don't need a new uniform every year in order to provide "unique characterization of each marching member" as a way to give your show a competitive edge.  And no you don't need to pay some unemployed hipster $10,000 to design something on an app that really requires no formal training or education to be able to do.  You don't need to shell out huge licensing fees to play some turtle-neck's esoteric crap when there's plenty of dead guys who actually knew how to write with free music for the taking.  They won't mind if you play it with Sousaphones or an iPad.  They're dead.  And props?  Honestly this is one area where bands go completely nuts with spending that isn't really necessary.  Band fees really have gotten completely out of control.  Alot of it is spent on instruction and travel; bands are traveling more and bringing in more part-time help than ever before...which is great....but so much of it goes unnecessarily into design.

I don't normally do this, and keep in mind that our band advanced in Area D and I do not particularly disagree with the results of either prelims or finals. But with the interest in UIL Judging Protocol popping up all over the threads, I'm going to give my 2 cents. I performed an evaluation of the results (scores - both ordinals and ranks) from prelims of all bands in Area D. Ordinals and Ranks all over the place. Yes, multiple worksheets in a spreadsheet yada, yada. My background is engineering and not music let alone marching arts, but there are correlations from both fields that can be used in comparison and analysis.
 
It is obvious from reading almost all, OK - ALL of the posts in the TxBands forums, that most concerns of UIL scoring in our community is not so much that a certain band was not placed where they wanted to be, It is more that our community is trying to educate themselves with the scoring process. As we educate ourselves, we find that the scoring we thought we would see, is inconsistent, anomalous and pie in the sky at times. I thought nothing of it until I had the bright idea to review Area D's scores. Again keep in mind I have no issues with the placements in Area D, it's the process and the numbers that baffles me. If score was more consistent Judge to Judge, there would have been placement changes. All bands that advanced would still have advanced. So here is my soapbox moment:
 
My analysis involved evaluating the ordinals and ranks of all judges and analyzing them for anomalous scoring by comparing the scores from each judge for each band (eg. 4, 11, 5 - Hennys prelims score for Music) Where did "11" come from? Soooo, that made me look deeper. I concluded that Henny wasn't the only band effected. What I found was that out of the 32 bands participating in Prelims, scores that fall into an anomalous catagory - J1 had 19% - J2 had 22% and J3 had 6%. 6%, while still high by my standards, I could live with that, but 20% on average from J1 & J2. I feel that this is not satisfactory at this level of adjudication.
 
Not to question a judge's experience or education to be qualified to perform adjudication, but what holds judges accountable when placed on these panels? Keep in mind that these individuals are NOT Gods. This is part of their job description that they have decided to pursue and THEY should be held accountable for their profession.
 
It is one thing to have an advanced music education or an extensive amount of experience in the marching arts and another to perform the tasks of an adjudicator in a fair and consistent manner. As is obvious from the scoring in Area D. I haven't looked at any of the other Areas and from what I read, I don't want to. The percentage of anomalous scores from 2 of the judges is not acceptable in my opinion. These inconsistencies should not exist at this level of professionalism. If it's not the system, then there should be a system of accountability in place that UIL judges should have to adhere to. Should an adjudicator's scoring deviate from the standards that are in place (what ever that is - UIL, educate us!), for any reason, they should be evaluated to determine if they are truly qualified to adjudicate at this level. When I say for any reason, how often are Music Adjudicators tested for hearing loss? How often are Marching Adjudicator's eyes tested? They may actually be scoring based on what they actually hear or see and their sight or hearing may not be what it once was (a lot of these judges are not youngsters). Have they been evaluated for favoritism? Are they consistently falling into the "anomalous catagory"? Maybe there are procedures already in place for this from UIL. How would we know as a community?
 
The way I feel about it is that the general marching art community puts these individuals up on a pedestal and bow to their every whim, and we shouldn't. They should prove to the community that they are truly qualified to perform these tasks in all aspects of experience, aptitude, and physical abilities. We as a community should be educated more by UIL in the intricacies of the judging process, procedures and accountability and not rely on hearsay. UIL should hold these adjudicators accountable for their scoring (because that's their job). If an Adjudicator is inconsistent in scoring within a percentage of all judges on a panel, then they should be evaluated to determine if they are truly qualified to be on a UIL panel. If deemed not within the standards, they should be sent down to AA (sorry baseball analogy) and work their way back into form. If they are deemed to show favoritism, they should be dismissed immediately and never used again. If they are just bad at this, then they should be mentored and reevaluated before allowing to judge again at this level. If they are consistent, fair and always on their game, then reward them. UIL and the Adjudicators of these events should be continually reminded that what they put down on those score sheets are not being reviewed by just the directors and staffs of the bands. These documents are reviewed by the thousands of Boosters, Parents and Participants of this great State. Their consistency and professionalism have an effect on the continued success of the Marching Arts in Texas. If the community starts to have doubts in the Adjudicator's abilities, they may have doubts about participation. I know kids that not only quit band but gave up music because of issues with adjudication. This is something that just should not happen.
 
Last note:
If UIL has determined that all the Adjudicators they assign to panels are truly qualified for the job at hand, then they need to evaluate and correct their scoring system, because it's flawed. I am sure there are several members of TxBands forums that would be glad to offer suggestions to systems that actually work. I could think of a few.
 
...steps off and goes back into his doghouse...