bchorn

Not really. It's just two different scales for the same range. It's like comparing 10 one dollar bills and 100 dimes and saying one is worth more than the other.

Honestly, rather than debate the Area D finalists with each other, I'm much more interested in debating the strength of the Area D finalists as a whole compared to other Areas. So I'm very interested to see how all the Area D finalists do at BOA San Antonio next week. We'll get a good idea of how strong this Area is against the rest of the best.

Looking at this prelim scores Churchill (56) was closer to Hutto (57) and Weiss (60) than they were with McNeil (46).

What must be frustrating for McNeil is despite improving all around (from show design to music to drill) over the last 3 years that they've continually finished 9th place in Area each one of those 3 years. I definitely feel for them.

I spoke with some Westwood parents last night and yes...they were planning on doing all three if they made state. 😱

Yeah, I am not a fan of lumping all parents from a particular band together with a few parents someone sat next to. Yes, there may be some new parents who aren't familiar with the contest etiquette. But lets not disparage the entire band because of a tiny few.

McNeil was a bit of a surprise to me though. They beat Dripping Springs by 1 place last week at TMC but this week there was big separation between the two. They beat Moe & Gene Johnson by 4 places at TMC but this week Johnson lapped them. Last week their music scores tied Round Rock in the prelims and this week there was even bigger separation between the two.

Cedar Ridge had two judges that didn't like them. One music judge had them at 7th and one visual judge had them at 9th. On the flip side they had another put them at 2nd. Honestly, there were only three bands that got consistent ordinals from the judges: Reagan (1st), McNeil (9th), and Churchill (10th). So I chalk up 2nd-8th as being pretty close together to create wild fluctuations.

Can the OP or an admin add the year to the thread title please. 😀

Oh yeah...Leander ISD split off from the Austin ISD/RR ISD area a while ago. Its crazy how many really good bands are in Austin.

I'm confused. None of the bands I mentioned are Leander ISD. In fact, all of the bands I mentioned are in Area D and will be competing against each other on Saturday night.

Area D is going to be insanely competitive this year with Westwood, McNeil, Hutto, and Churchill stepping it up. Throw in the usual state contenders (Round Rock, Reagan, CTJ, Dripping Springs, Bowie, and Cedar Ridge) and you can see there's going to be some really deserving bands of state that unfortunately won't go to state.

Stony Point made a huge leap over last year. I actually like their show! I hope they continue their upward trajectory.

So I pointed something out about BOA Austin that I think people overlooked. Some judges are hestitant to give out big scores earlier in finals than later. This is why the lower block of finals performs first and then the higher block performs second. The same is true within a block as well. Vandy performed 1st in the upper block at BOA Austin finals...and Rouse performed last in the upper block. And think this performance order hurt Vandy (but only a little) and helped Rouse (but only a little). And the result was an extremely narrow win by Rouse. And if you look at BOA Austin prelim results from earlier that day, you see that Vandy had a 1.45 lead over Rouse. https://marching.musicforall.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2023/09/Austin-Prelims-1.pdf

Why haven't they posted score breakdowns yet? Grr...

Rouse was definitely good. In fact, I liked their show the best. I'm just pointing out that they beat Vandy...who was also really good...by a razor thin margin (0.15 points). Last three winning margins were 0.6 (2022), 0.25 (2021), and 1.45 (2019).

I'm interested to see Rouse and Vandergrift go head to head against each other. Not to take anything away from Rouse but when I saw Vandergrift was performing first in the top 6 block (and therefore likely to get slightly lower scores) I wondered if that would have an impact on their final score. And when you consider that Rouse performed last in the top 6 block (and therefore likely to get slightly better scores) and how close the two scores were, you wonder if there was an impact there.

Austin high finished behind Anderson and way behind McNeil and Dripping Springs at Capital City music festival. So unfortunately I would say Austin has really long odds of making finals. https://www.capitalcitymarching.org/competition/results/

Round Rock is going to Grand Nationals...but their band calendar also lists the state marching championships as well...so I'm assuming that means they'll go to state if they qualify. Westwood's calendar shows them going to St Louis Super Regional...and San Antonio Super Regional...and state marching contest if they qualify...all within a span of 10 days. That seems like a nightmare from a logistics standpoint but we've seen bands do it before. Dripping Springs is going Grand Nationals and their band calendar shows state marching contest but no BOA San Antonio. Bowie is going to Grand Nationals and they have both BOA San Antonio and State on their calendar. CTJ is going to Grand Nationals but their band calendar isn't showing anything so not sure what they are doing. So we'll see who drops out of state if they qualify to advance.

Churchill's has definitely improved but Area D is a beast so not sure about them making state. If only 5 advance, they have to beat at least 4 of the following bands. CTJ Reagan Round Rock Westwood Dripping Springs Cedar Ridge Bowie McNeil Yes, they beat McNeil but Dripping Spring beat McNeil the week before that at Capital City and Dripping Spring was beat by Westwood, Round Rock, Cedar Ridge the week before that at BOA Austin. And we know both SA schools are going to make it as well.

+1 to everything you said here. All the shows were great. I was surprised by McNeil finishing in 2nd place though. But when looking at the finals recap, it appears one visual judge really didn't like McNeil...placing them 7th. That lone outlier was enough to give Churchill the win.

I agree that this comparison is useless when you are trying to compare scores that are really close with one another. In other words, I think it would be foolish to say that Carmel would hands down beat Hebron at Grands National based on those two scores. However, where I think the comparison is valid is when the scores are much wider apart. So I think we can all agree that the lower half of the Grand Nationals finals (whose highest score is 91.0) would have been pushed out of the finals if the upper half of San Antonio (whose lowest score was 93.4) had been present at Grand Nationals. Heck, Hendrickson finished 20th at San Antonio with an 85 and only improved to an 89 over the next week. I imagine most of the San Antonio finals would have improved on their scores as well. So if anything...the scores are little biased toward the Grand Nationals finals.

I put this list together just for grins. This list includes the scores from the SA finals and the GN finals and then sorts the bands in order from those scores. I know you can't compare scores exactly between contests but I think from a relative sense you can get an idea.

I can surmise this much happen. I know that Bowie opened in 88 which was built to offset the explosive growth in South Austin. Many of the South Austin neighborhoods that slowly started transitioning from Crockett to Bowie were wealthy affluent homes/families. And the neighborhoods that didn't end up in Bowie's jurisdiction were the older homes that didn't have as much wealth. So 93 would have been after that transition was fully completed.

I wish people would stop trolling and share the story of what actually happened. I graduated from Anderson in 1990 so I witnessed Crockett in their heyday so am very interested in the actual story of what happened.