LostChoirGuy

Vandegrift to me was a top half of finals performance but not a lock for a medal. Of the ones I saw, I could see Hebron, Vista Ridge, Marcus, The Woodlands, and maybe even Flower Mound on top of them and I missed the first half of the day.

Wow, I really liked North Shore. In my opinion they are comfortably in the bubble.

In my opinion we've got 43 bands with a chance to make finals. Haha But really the bubble seems very large.

There's nothing wrong with wanting new bands or rooting for an underdog. The real issue is that you posted in reply to a comment talking about specific groups.

Flower Mound reminding us not to count them out.

Back to the conversation about school districts with all of their traditional high schools making state- Sharyland ISD Pearland ISD

I missed United's opener, but really loved their second half. Great job!

I love that show from Vista Ridge. It's really satisfying and maybe less nuanced than some of the other top contenders, do it's easy to relate to.

I love the stripe of yellow in the woodlands uniforms pant leg. It makes it easy to see mistakes, but looks sooo cool when they are jazz running together. The visual GE it creates is phenomenal. Do we think TWHS could take home a visual caption at grand nats?

Oh dear! I hope everything is ok.

How many Wylie schools are there? If it's just the two then they both made it. There is also College Station ISD maybe...

Yes, but playing better in earlier parts of the game can make up for it. A penalty does not equal a disqualification.

It's actually quite different. We are talking about a disqualification vs. a penalty or score. If that team was already up by enough before the penalty it wouldn't matter. Here Waxahachie could have been in first place and then was disqualified. It would make more sense to give an ordinal penalty. Maybe one ordinal for each second or something like that. I know that's arbitrary but would be more fair.

Hmmm I'm debating spending money to get the stream...

Box 5 has issues with what seems to be server overload, but the content when available is well done. The audio usually is balanced decently and they know how to film marching band. NFHS just have no idea what they are doing. I've seen them ignore the sections that are in the middle of a feature to zoom in on a section of students that aren't playing or moving at all. I've even seen them zoom in on the drum majors. I recall there being big issues with audio quality too but I might be making that up. I just know that they don't really know what they are doing when it comes to marching band.

If videos are being sent around and anyone is willing, I would also love to see any of the area performances of area B and C groups.

Even so, these four bands alone will make an amazing show.

Aww the one year I decide not to participate in the predictions, there is finally a reward. 😕 I've been top 10 at least once or twice before in past seasons. Oh well.

Anyone know if show of shows will be livestreamed? I imagine there might be someone recording at least.

If you reread what I said, I am not advocating for those changes. I am saying that the idea of realigning as someone mentioned above doesn't seem feasible without sacrificing south and west Texas bands. I didn't make commentary on whether that was a good thing or a bad thing because I wanted to leave that up for you all to decide. But personally I think it would be bad. I know when I was in school, Keller ISD and a few surrounding districts were in area A or at least what is now called area A and it felt weird to have the El Paso schools competing against DFW schools. I was glad when they changed it so that we could have more representation from out there, even if it made things harder for KISD.

I saw someone comment about realigning this area, but my question is how would they do it? Area B is one of the other 3 most competitive in the state. I suppose they could make a third birth Texas area and draw from area A or maybe some of the Waco/ Killeen area bands, but that has its own problems. If they took Waco/ Killeen out of area D then it would have less spots and that's a disaster. Area A is important for having geographic representation, but probably the best solution would be to split up area A. The new area A would be regions 1, 2, 7, and 16. The new area B would be regions 5, 8, 30, and 31. The new area C would be regions 3, 4, 20, 21, 24, and 25 The new area D would be regions 11, 12, 18 and 26. The new area H would be regions 6, 22, 29, and 32. I think area D still could use some adjustments in this scenario though. I'd maybe add dripping springs ISD to region 29 or 32. The other option would be to split up area D. You could put region 8 with areas B and C and then split that to have the new area D in north texas. Region 12 could go to area G. Region 18 to area E and region 26 to area I. This would make it better for areas B, C, and what used to be D but probably make areas I and E much more difficult. Basically there is no good option, but the best options require big changes that reduce the amount of West and South Texas groups that will likely make it in.

The waxahachie one is baffling, but from what I've heard, there were some evident struggles in the brass opening fanfare for Keller that people have mentioned. That judge might have been harsher about it. I think it bodes well for them going into state because they are still improving and if they fixed that up they likely would have been ahead of at least Timber Creek here.

Yes, I'm really happy for Haltom. It's good to see a comeback year for them.

Thank you for sharing their names. They deserve the recognition. That guard book is seriously stellar and those kids are performing the heck out of it.

So I don't know who is the color guard instructor(s) at The Woodlands, but I have this thought that at least a handful of the 500+ guard members they have (only a slight exaggeration) will go on to become instructors themselves some day spreading whatever magic they learned and we will see programs executing at this level all across the state. Maybe it's a fever dream but that would be amazing for the progress of visual programs throughout Texas.