TrenBS

The scores at these regionals are honestly pretty crazy, for Dallas McKinney Boyd, Garland, and Rock Hill are dominating the SA groups so far, Pearland is decimating Houston for now, and Onyx A getting an 80+ this early in IA, granted Im not super knowledgeable on WGI but we got some pretty heavy hitters already, finals tonight (I think) is gonna be pretty crazy!

I absolutely hate to be that guy but… Reagan*

Honestly, yeah, its pretty insane that 5A B is just on a different wavelength than this area for virtually no reason, right now any of the top 5 at B could take first here lol, maybe 6 I am expecting HP to move to C, if we added another 5A powerhouse to B than I cant see the top 5 switching around that much, so it would make sense to throw em here, I dont know a ton about this area so could be wrong

I honestly dont know why a ton of local comps just didnt move their schedule considering BOA and tons of other locals are happening at the same time, so I dont really know what Bedford will look like in all honesty

Just to put some variety into the flooded US bands and BOA front page lol, if you looked at what the spring UIL meeting entails, they may potentially change the 5 judge system to have Woodwind, Brass, Percussion, Vis. Ensemble, and Vis. Individual. How do you guys think this may change the competition in terms of potential finalists, and state qualifiers? I think personally (grain of salt, of course) we will see Marcus take 1st much more often considering their percussion and visuals place higher generally more consistently than Hebron, especially this year, I could see Prosper maybe taking ground from Flower Mound happening sooner unless they beef up next year, and Boyd will likely place consistently higher considering their percussion is one of the strongest programs (and from what Ive seen from their band they are going to be insane this year along with McKinney High), otherwise I cant really say and would like to hear some other peoples opinions, and maybe how it may affect some lower placing groups into maybe going way higher, curious on what other people think about it

This is already nuts, between the McKinneys that took up most of the bubble, Bentonville and Jenks, the previous top 4ish, and the rest being very strong and upwards programs, this is going to be an insanely competitive BOA for sure, probably the toughest overall for regionals, we will have to see who else gets confirmed

Just out of curiosity, how did you get access to that? Cause I dont see it anywhere on either site

LISD Vs. giving 3 state slots to area C lol In all seriousness, locally there really isnt a spoken rivalry between the McKinney schools, they are all just trying to get ahead of each other but their shows are so distinct in style its really hard to compare them to each other, I think North executes the best, while Boyd has the best individual musicianship, and high is well rounded nowadays, next year will likely see them butting heads more

Hebron 15/19/21 BA 2014 Vista Ridge 2018 Coppell 2016

To shed a bit of light of this situation (not Wakeland directly), but some directors want their kids in the proper headspace before a performance and it usually led to militaristic rules (I know pre 2017 the LISD district had a rule, or at least Hebron, where kids couldnt talk on a bus ride to any 1 day competition, pretty brutal) or implemented rules that attempted to stop bad behavior before it starts, which while good on paper just makes the whole fun of band non-existent. The kids will still like the directors, but there are so many rules even for sitting in the stands that it ruins a lot of the extra relaxed fun from football games, post performance, and in general causes persistent stress, it happened with my high school band and its likely a similar conversation with Wakeland

I feel the same way, although I think they wont add a new area until 7A so its not multiple waves of changes

You have any idea on how Area C-B could change? With 6A B losing 2 state slots I severely doubt itll stay the same

1 day where my dream of another 6A area for North Texas gets crushed lol In all seriousness I hope it doesn't stay the same, its gonna be crappy for Area B and C in particular if zero rezoning happens

I dont plan on going to any comps, but its good to see Waco be a big meetup before 5A/6A gladiator arenas lol, Im really hoping to see McKinney Boyd/High go but in all honesty with region most likely on the day Im not holding my breath, if region is moved to another day than Id expect those 2, and North is near guaranteed

Itll be the year my alma mater my school makes state finals, hopefully sooner😢 But I can only see heat being the problem since its such a popular contest, and its a shame that there could honestly be no A groups and maybe 1 or 2 AAs

Im surprised the Austin BOA has such a small limit this year, its such a central location for the South Texas powerhouses so Im shocked they did that considering it will strangle out the 1A-2A representation while making the spots pretty annoying to get

More local to me and on a smaller scale, but McKinney High making area finals after not making since 2016, and even with that successful early season in 2021 with losing a decent bit of their staff and a huge senior class in 2022 and still coming back strong to make area finals this year, they pretty much had everything going against them and they still managed to make it and I respect the heck out of them for it

Sorry to say but that was from '08 lol, most of the graduates this past summer were 4 years old when this thread was active lol, I thought it was recent too because of the mistaken post haha

I know the McKinney schools took a massive hit because the senior class currently in the ISD had the remote learning from the get go and resulted in tons of drop-outs, and early graduations (the Boyd senior class for band currently is around 26, which includes the band, percussion, AND guard, typically its around 50-60 normally, and the previous senior class was around 60 for just the band and percussion), so besides rezoning McKinney North to be 6A for a sneaky move up if they wish to (2-5 people below cutoff), its literally a matter of phasing out the current seniors before all the schools repopulate and North moves up Although Im on the other side of the realignment spectrum in curiosity, are we going to see major area and region rezonings with 6A state slots going down considerably while North Texas is gaining both population and standard of music/sports exponentially? Because to me it doesnt seem sustainable to leave things as is, open to anyones thought

Im not sure how brutal it is on South Texas, but in North Texas the humidity while still higher than most of the surrounding states generally sits around 15-40%, so to my knowledge very little time is lost in the drier parts of North Texas, but I cant speak for Little Elm in that regard If anything since it affects all school activities, most districts will likely realign to a later time (8:45-9:30) to allow for over an hour of before/after school practice for sports and marching, with Marching band splitting its time if possible with 1/2 in the morning and 1/2 later in the day, naturally, Texas is simply too competitive for us to just cut football or band time without at least an attempt to maintain our growth, so mornings will be the saving grace (also considering students get a nice 65-85 degree weather to stay mentally engaged and not completely fun 118 heat index

Thank you, sorry the last time I had to remember abbreviations was high school freshman year, def gotta brush up on the specifics😂

I think having just Coppell as a legacy state finalist is a healthy option, as since North is going to become 6A in the coming years, the repeated success of McKinney, Prosper, and Wylie schools allows for healthy competition while not being completely impossible for an upset which is about to occur with the current area C since I severely doubt there will be any major upset that beat most/all of the consecutive finalists. Coppell being there allows for a bar for the more well-established bands to try and reach without it being impossible, and it takes a load off of the Area B bands, I don't really care if Boyd falls off and doesn't make it I just want it to be more fair for less established bands to get noticed and to experience state

I mean honestly I think it would be for the better (if it was a super, regular should have OK bands take priority of course considering like 31s the limit), since lesser known OK bands would have similar level TX bands to scale to, and give a reason to be better, it has a lot of potential imo

Thats ignoring the literal wave of all of North Texas clammering to be a finalist lock in a brand new regional, if they held a “regional” there, it would take probably 5 days of flooded emails before it gets bumped up to a super just due to how cost efficient it is. And again, it gives OK and AK bands a chance to get a foot in the door on the next level, which you could argue could be Texas lites in terms of quality (similar top level bands, with not quite as much depth due to lower populations), it would make national competitions much more interesting with more states having a platform I think I just want more states to have Texas level depth, OK, AR, and KY have such great potential

Very true, if North Texas just wasnt so compact it would be so much easier to transfer others to other regions and areas, but due to that being seemingly extremely hard to do currently I think a new area is bound to show up in 2026, with major alignments in preparation this February hopefully, because if not these next 2 years are going to be very frustrating for a lot of bands, cause only 2 areas for all of North Texas is hardly sustainable before bands just dont deem it worth the effort