bchorn

I read orangebloods every day so while I enjoy a good football discussion I think it was wholly inappropriate to detract from the Lake Travis marching band accomplishments this season by bringing up Garrett Gilbert on this thread. Lets stick to marching bands on txbands.com please! Thanks!

For those who have purchased the Bands of America webcast, are you also able to replay the preliminary shows after the fact? I won't be able to watch the morning TX bands because i'll be at work so I could watch them later tonight before the Woodlands performs.

Yeah, this was my thought as well. Area D was tough enough in 5A without Cedar Park, Hendrickson and Lake Travis. Throw in the San Antonio north schools and now 5a Area D is going to be filthy tough. On the other end, this move will allow more 4A Area D bands to advance to state. Bottom line is that Area D 4A/5A is loaded with elite bands.

Again...why is this a big deal?

Why is this even a big deal? If Centennial is capable of playing the same book as the three time 5A state champion, that actually says a lot about the program attempting it. What about Cedar Park? Their book is from Carolina Crown 2010...you gonna make a big deal about that too?

When I watched Marcus during the prelims, I kept asking myself

I want to add my congratulations for the austin area bands as well. Back in my day (late 80's), it was always Crockett and whoever else happened to be really good that year. These days, Austin has so many top quality band programs that we are hanging with the "big boys". I want to add an additional shout out to my alma mater Anderson High. First they placed 17th last year in their first ever state marching contest appearance and now they finish 11th a BOA Super Regional contest that featured a lot of Texas' best bands. I'm so excited about where this band is going.

I have to agree with the others on this thread who felt underwhelmed by Marcus. While I thought they were definitely worthy of being in the finals, I didn't feel they deserved to win it all like they had many times before.

Excellent point. The point gap between 14th place (Anderson with 84.00) and 34th place (Seven Lakes with 77.05) was almost 7 points. 20 bands spread across is tight! As a comparison, 10 points separated Anderson from 1st place (LD Bell, 94.25) Once I get a copy of the recaps I can download/copy and paste into Excel, I'll be able to perform more analysis about how big the bubble was.

I'll be leaving Austin in about an hour for San Antonio to begin my two day adventure of preliminaries. I've never watched this many bands before in a two day period so I'm feeling a little overwhelmed. I think I'll be able to make it! Good thing the Saturday afternoon block looks to be the best.

I would love to see a top 10 shoot out between Indiana bands and Texas bands. The best 10 bands from each state competing head-to-head. THAT would be a competition!

I think the fairest solution would be to rotate the championships around the country. It's really hard for the bands on either coast to travel anywhere to the mid-west so only the elite bands like Tarpoon Springs (FL) Wando (SC) and the Atlanta schools make the attempt. So maybe rotate from West Coast, Texas, Indianapolis, and East coast every year. Of course, I know that BOA hosts Grand Nationals in Indianapolis for the same reasons DCI hosts the world championships their too: Logistics. It's very hard on both organizations to rotate the championships each year so having the championship in the same city each year reduces expenses and increases the stability for the event. This thread depresses me as much as a discussion of a legitimate playoff system for College Football since both seem highly unlikely to change anytime soon.

Just to clarify, reserved seating is only available for finals. Both days of preliminaries are general admission seating only.

To Bowie Freshman Mom's credit, 4th through 12th place were spread over five full points. And there was almost a full 6 point gap between 4th place and 2nd place. We are not going to see that kind of spread in San Antonio. BOA Atlanta was dominated by two bands, third place was a gimmie, while the rest of the bands battled for fourth place.

That was my thought. I figured one judge gave himself a lot of room at the start of the day and then forgot about CP as he was judging others the rest of the day. If the judge really didn't CP then the judge could have given the same placement during the finals which would have been to keep CP from advancing.

I'm surprised I haven't seen anyone mention this on txbands but Cedar Park's entire book is from Carolina Crown's 2010 show. That's impressive!

I wouldn't call him a troll. I would say that he just lacks the social grace of being able to deliver honest feedback in a non-offensive manner. It's very easy to "tell it like it is" with no regard to the other person's feelings. It takes skill and maturity to deliver honest feedback in a non-offensive manner.

I'm a UT fan as well but to me any college football/marching band fan is still going to have a tough choice with LSU-Bama being on at the same time of the finals.

Check page 2

I agree. I'm going to re-iterate a point that I made earlier in this thread. There are going to be a lot of really good bands at BOA San Antonio. I think everyone needs to raise their bar for what they consider a "bubble" band because there competition is going to be fierce.

Another band worth mentioning is the six-time Colorado state champion Air Academy. They've won 3 out of the last 4 state championships in Colorado so they could be another band considered on the "bubble".

I have to agree. There are going to be a lot of crazy good bands at BOA San Antonio. In fact, I think the only thing that is a lock is that a lot of really good bands are going to be left out of the finals competition.

Its funny what you mentioned about the biased people who watch shows. There was a guy sitting next to me at the Vista Ridge contest who was quiet the whole evening until the very last band (Westlake) took the field. From that moment on, he was clapping almost every 30 seconds throughout the entire show. It didn't matter what the band was doing on the field or if everyone else in the stands was trying to enjoy the show (which I enjoyed very much despite this guy), he was clapping.

Westlake is definitely legit. I wasn't a fan of their show last year so had a little bit of bias against them. However, they quickly won me over last night. Their woodwinds had an amazingly fast run at one point that made one of the judges laugh with disbelief. I know this because i was sitting right in front of the judges in their roped off section at the top of the stadium. Their sound was big and bold. The stadium was a great venue. They only have a few kinks to work out for next year. 1. Concessions had run out of food by the time finals started. 2. They need to find more remote locations for the bands to warm up. Several quiet moments for the performing bands were marred by other bands warming up.

My alma mater just posted the prelim schedule for Friday and Saturday. Friday schedule 12:00pm-8:00pm Saturday schedule 7:30am-3:30pm