Beanbag52

State Week! Now that Area’s over here are some predictions: 🥇CP 🥈Rouse 🥉Lone Star/Wakeland (one of the closest battles of the FISD schools we’ve seen yet!) 4. Wakeland/Lone Star 5. Lebanon Trail 6. Leander 7. Aledo 8. Argyle 9. Henderickson 10. Burleson Cen10 11. Roma 12. Friendswood

Area B is less than 3 weeks away! Here are my picks for this comp after the huge competition in Prosper yesterday. 🥇 Lone Star* Lone Star is looking like a massive powerhouse this year, and will be a deadly contender at state. They have probably had the most improvement out of any school I’ve seen from this point last year. Jumping from 11th to 4th in Prosper is wild. Normally at BOA competitions, LS is decently far behind Wakeland, and then they get closer in UIL competitions, but they have been right there together at both this year. (Overtaking Wakeland in visual at dfw prelims and prosper finals) They always hit it hard coming into area too, and their show is already very well developed for this point in the season. It’ll be close between LS and Wakeland, but I’ll give the slight edge to Lone Star on this one. Their show has so much energy and potential to improve the next couple weeks. 🥈Wakeland* Looking and sounding phenomenal as always. I do like this show better than some of their previous years, it’s definitely something special. Wakeland is super impressive too for this point in the season. They’ve beaten powerhouse 6A schools already this season like Prosper and Coppell, and are on Marcus’ heels. I could really see this going either way. It’s incredible how much improvement we’ve seen from all the groups here. Area B is looking to turn out as a bloodbath as usual 😂 🥉Lebanon Trail* LT is NOT messing around this year. I think they have a chip on their shoulder after not making state last year, and they’re out for blood. I don’t see anyone else beating them besides Lone Star and Wakeland. They’ve even been hanging with the big dogs at BOA this year. I heard that they had never made a BOA finals before, and they showed up and dominated the bottom 6 yesterday. They’re so much cleaner right now than this time any other season beforehand, I think this show is super special. Even at state I think it’s realistic for them to get top 7-8th. (Maybe even top 6??!) 4) Argyle* I haven’t seen Argyle in a few weeks, but from what I’ve heard recently they’re on track to do very well again. I love the Mahler, and I think their show has a really cool story to tell. They’ve been getting so much better since their 4A days, and I don’t think that’s going anywhere. They’re coming off of last year’s impressive 7th place finish at state, and they’re definitely coming into Area B with some fire. Again, I could see Argyle getting top 8-9 again at state. This really shows you the incredible depth in this area. I wish we had more state spots. 5) Reedy 6) McKinney North 7) Walnut Grove 8 Independence 9) Heritage 10) Liberty (sorry not writing paragraphs for non state I gave up 😂😂)

I’ll hop on the predictions after yesterday 1) Marcus 2) Wakeland 3) Coppell 4) Prosper 5) Lone Star 6) Wylie 7) Southlake Carroll 8) Lebanon Trail 9) McKinney 10) Braswell 11) Forney 12) Burleson Centennial

Somebody correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure that there's a new rule that says for every medaling band, their area gets an extra place to advance to state. This seems good on paper until you realize that the 3 bands that medaled last year are all in the same area, and are really the only competitive 5A bands in that area. Whereas all band from Area B made the top 10 at state. (Wakeland 4, Lone Star 6, Argyle 7, McN 10) and LT probably would have been in the top 12 as well if there was a 5th spot at area B. It's a good rule on paper as I said, but doesn't really work well in the 5A class right now. I'm not sure if it's real, just a rumor I heard...

Congratulations to all 5A bands across the state of Texas! This year was by far the best and most competitive I’ve ever seen. So many memorable shows and moments from this year, and thank you to all students, directors, and parents who have made this season possible. All of the bands here should be extremely proud of what they have achieved this season, these finalist bands define excellence. Special shoutout to LeanderISD for sweeping those medals, that is absolutely incredible with such a competitive competition, congrats. Also to Area B for having all 4 bands advance to finals, and FriscoISD for having 2 schools in the top 6. And last but not least, to Aledo, for coming back from not making finals last year to coming top 5 at state, amazing. To you students: whether you won the gold, or had your final run of your show in Prelims, be proud and don’t take for granted what a privilege it is to be a part of your program. All of you are wonderful and belong where you are. Thank you for such an incredible season. Can’t wait for what you have to bring next year!

It’s difficult to rank bands I haven’t seen as much, but Leander is always incredible and never to be underestimated. Anything 3-6 is up in the air and will probably be very close. I don’t like taking BOA competitions from 3 weeks ago into account as much as Area, only 1. If you look at the breakdown scores, Lone Star was on par with Wakeland (bronze medalist last year) with only losing to them by 1 ordinal and having a better raw score. I have seen massive improvement from Lone Star these past few weeks and only see them improving more this week. Excited to see how the top 6 place!

After doing a little research with Area scores and watching what videos I could find on YT, here are my predictions for Finals! Bottom 6 is pretty much based on what I’ve heard from others, last year, and Area scores from Saturday since I don’t know much about most of them. 🥇Cedar Park 🥈Rouse 🥉Lone Star 4. Wakleand 5. Leander 6. Aledo ———————————— 7. Hendrickson 8. Midlothian 9. Argyle 10. Friendswood 11-12 bubble: Centennial, Colleyville Heritage, McKinney North, Roma

Wakeland always performs their shows incredibly, but there’s only so much they can do with their lack of demand in their shows. In my opinion, for the last 4-5 years at least, they have had much easier shows than their FISD counter parts. Lone Star especially has an extremely high demand, but until this year, they could not execute it to the level that Wakeland does. But after seeing many performances from both schools all year it’s evident that Lone Star is not messing around, and if Wakeland wants to keep beating them, they’ll have to step up their game in that aspect. Not to take anything away form Wakeland, since what they do is still very difficult and performed at a very high level, but everyone is improving so much every year that I start to think they might not be able to get away with that this year.

State judges are good enough that they won’t allow any major advantages to later performing bands. A little will happen naturally, but I they’re trained to judge fairly all day, and I doubt anyone will be kept out of finals/top half because of their performance time.

By UIL standards, I think Lone Star and Wakeland are very very close. This is the closest I've ever seen an area competition, with Lone Star losing by 1 point. Not only that but in both of the music captions they lost, it was by 4 and 2 points out of 1000. Both of of those judges were extremely close to giving Lone Star the upper hand. And Lone Star won raw score, also by a very small margin. Out of 5,000 possible points, Lone Star only got 14 more than Wakeland. I think it is common for people to just assume history will repeat itself again and again without doing any research first, and although it does happen a lot, the gap between these 2 schools is getting smaller and smaller every year. They are both incredible programs with amazing staff, and it's always exciting to see them compete. In my opinion, the placements at state with these 2 will be solely based on how they spend the next 5 days. It's anyone's game, and and props to Lone Star for starting to give Wakeland a real run for their money, both in Prelims and Finals. I know this is a tense rivalry, and both schools are going to do all they can this week to get the upper hand, so best of luck to both!

I haven’t seen anyone outside of area B so I can’t speak on overall, but I will say that last night Wakeland and Lone Star both looked super hot and will be a tight race between them this year. Both schools have seen major improvements and I know they both want medals. Haven’t seen anything from Rouse or CP yet, but I’m hearing they’re better than ever and want those top spots as well. From what I’ve seen and heard I think it’s very possible top 4 will be Lone Star, Wakeland, Rouse, and Cedar Park (not in any order). If memory serves me right, 10 finalist bands are returning to state from last year: Cedar Park Rouse Wakleand Leander Burleson Centennial Lone Star Henderickson Fiendswood Richland Roma (Forney moved up to 6A, LT missed state at Area B I remember many people were shocked Aledo missed finals last year at state, and I think they want it this year, so it’s very possible they’re in the mix. I don’t know much of other schools outside area B though. Once I hear opinions and hopefully see some recordings of bands I can give more confident predictions before state.

From my experiences, if the directors do not want their kids to cheer until their band is called, they will tell them not to. Yes, upperclassmen and leadership should know better, but this falls on the directors as well for doing a poor job of maintaining integrity of the program.

100% agree. This is caused by terrible leadership, stemming from the directors. If any MN kids are in these forums, I would hope you see the comments about this and reevaluate, because that is extremely rude and disrespectful. I know people at LT and how hard they worked this season. It doesn’t matter what the situation is, you do NOT cheer at another band’s misfortune. And props to Argyle and the others who made it to showing some class.

No, it’s just that the judges that picked wakeland over lone star had much smaller differences than the ones lone star beat wakeland in. For example, in one of the Music captions, Wakeland beat Lone Star, but only by 2/1000. While the visual caption Lone Star won, they beat wakeland by 20 points.

I know Wakeland and Lone Star had a football game tonight. Was anyone there to see the bands?