bchorn

3 posts of CTJ = Lock and 2 posts of Bowie = Lock. You are quite an original thinker!

It would be pretty cool to if BOA could rotated Grand Nats between Indy and Texas. Xenon, I wasn't really think of any stadium in particular. However, now that you mention it, there probably wouldn't be a more appropriate venue size-wise for the contest in DFW other than Cowboy stadium. But like you said, that's a horrible place for marching bands.

I agree that Indiana bands and Texas bands are amongst the best in the country. When you mention BOA results thought, I can't help but also think about the home field advantage that the Indiana elite bands enjoy at Grand Nationals...not only from a crowd aspect but also from a budget standpoint. None of the Indiana bands have to raise money to travel across the country every year for Grand Nationals like Texas bands do. In fact, band members of Indiana bands get to sleep in their own beds each night of the contest. Which begs the question...how many Indiana bands would be able to afford to travel to Grand Nationals if they were held in DFW each year? Conversely, how many additional Texas bands would attend Grand Nationals if they were held in DFW? I think we would definitely see some different results.

This one's pretty epic. If you can keep up with all the meter changes, I'm sure you'll win the audition. Here's a link where the piece is played at full speed but no video of conductor.

nm

According to the Bowie band website, Kim Shuttleworth is the new band director.

"Mahler Grooves" reminds me of Carolina Crown's "Rach Star".

Newwave, Do you mind reviewing your post again and editing it a little better? I only understood about half of what you wrote.

Yeah, I know it's marching season. I just didn't know there was that much demand in Central Texas for another marching band invitational. That's great!

So am I right that there will be four straight weeks of marching contest in Central Texas, correct? September 24 USSBA Central Texas Preview October 1 Capital City Marching contest October 8 Westlake Marching festival October 15 Vista Ridge marching festival

very sad indeed.

Anderson and Round Rock both made state last year and both placed in the teens. I believe Flower Mound was an Area Finalist in one of the toughest areas as well.

By my count there are 17 bands from the 2010 5A state competition (including 8 of the 10 finalists) as well as nine 2010 Area finalists as well. That's not including the 4A bands that will be in the mix for state this year as well. That is going to be one rock solid competition!

Very interesting that you mentioned the number of bands attending the super regional determines finals. Here's the count so far for the number of bands signed up to attend super regionals. Indiana: 28 Atlanta: 33 St Louis: 44 San Antonio: 55 That's a lot of marching bands!

So I haven't been to Super Regional BoA yet. How do they handle the judging of 80+ bands? Is it similar to Grand Nationals where the bands are dwindled down to a semi-finals and then a finals?Or is there just a finals and that's it.

troll much?

wow...does Indiana have any sort of rule limiting the amount of time they can practice? Also is Texas the only state that has a rule like this?

A friend sent me this link. http://www.wimp.com/drumcorps/ My first thought was why do they have to be "top secret?" Drum Corps do not have a problem with anonymity.

You raise an excellent point here. I was looking at the sheer number of quality bands in Texas and not taking the total population base in consideration. I would have to agree that proportionally Texas and Indiana have an equal amount of quality bands. Another fair point raised since I wasn't following BoA back in the 90's. If I had a lot more free time on my hands, I would have downloaded all the prelim standings and done a more complete competitive analysis that way. As such, I chose to stick with the finals. At this point, I think we are just talking semantics. To me, 5-7 Texas bands in a Grand Nationals finals is a Texas dominated finals. If I made it sound like I thought the finals would be all Texas bands then that was not my intention. I'm sure the bands that travel far distances today like Tarpon Springs and Broken Arrow would still travel to Texas and I'm sure they would still place. I just think there would be greater representation towards Texas bands given the home field advantage of proximity.

I did some analysis of the bands appearing in the Grand National finals for the past 10 years to see how often each of the states had bands appearing in the finals. So here's what I discovered. Indiana 38 Texas 29 Illinois 12 Oklahoma 8 Georgia 8 Michigan 7 Ohio 5 Florida 6 Pennsylvania, South Carolina 2 California, Kentucky, Louisiana 1 Not surprising Indiana dominated the number of finals appearances with 38 (more about this later). Texas was a strong second with 29 appearances. However, a trend I noticed when looking at the results was that Indiana had the same bands appearing in the finals whereas Texas had a much wider variety of schools. So I then decided to look at the number of schools from each state participating in the finals. Here's where it gets interesting. Texas 9 Indiana 5 Oklahoma 3 Georgia 3 Ohio 3 Illinois 2 Michigan, Florida, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, California, Kentucky, Louisiana 1 Texas had 9 different bands appear in the finals over the decade with 29 finals appearances. In contrast, Indiana had only 5 (with one band only appearing twice). While it is certainly commendable that Indiana has four nationally strong bands, it appeared to me that Indiana was top heavy in terms of band quality. Texas, on the other hand, has a wide variety bands making the finals every year. In fact, most of the Texas bands that made the BoA finals were not even the best Texas had to offer that year. Despite Texas never sending its current state champion to any of the finals this decade, Texas was still able to finish in the top 3 seven times (in 2003 TX had two bands in the top 3). Granted, it's more difficult for 4A schools to travel to Indianapolis so that eliminates half of the state champions from the decade. What makes this decade for Texas even more impressive is that in the previous 10 years (91-2000), Texas only had 6 bands with 9 finals appearances (Spring, Duncanville, Klein, Westfield, Churchill, Leander). So the quality of Texas bands really improved on a national scale at the start of this decade. Also, when talking about the number of finals appearances by the Indiana bands, something has to be said about proximity. All of these bands are essentially in the suburbs of Indianapolis and therefore these bands don't even have to spend the night in a hotel during the 3 day Grand Nationals competition. Can you imagine how many Texas bands would make the finals if BoA held the Grand Nationals in Dallas? Also, how many of the Indianapolis bands would still travel to Dallas every year? I imagine the results would be skewed heavily toward Texas bands if this were ever to happen. Here's a list of the Texas bands that made the Grand National finals this decade with their finals placement included in parenthesis. L.D. Bell 2001 (4), 2003 (5), 2006 (2), 2007 (1), 2008 (2), 2009 (2), 2010 (3) The Woodlands 2002 (8), 2004 (7), 2006 (4), 2007 (8), 2009 (7) Stephen F Austin 2002 (5), 2004 (4), 2007 (8), 2010 (9) Ronald Reagan 2002 (11), 2003 (2), 2005 (2) Bowie 2006 (12), 2009 (10) Winston Churchill 2002 (10), 2006 (10) Richland 2005 (7), 2007 (9) Westfield 2003 (1) Cedar Park 2010 (10) Marcus 2009 (4) Here's the same list by year. 2001 L.D. Bell (4) 2002 Stephen F. Austin (5), The Woodlands (8), Winston Churchill (10), Ronald Reagan (11) 2003 Westfield (1), Ronald Reagan (2), L.D. Bell (5) 2004 Stephen F. Austin (4), The Woodlands (7) 2005 Ronald Reagan (2),L.D. Bell (3), Richland (7) 2006 L.D. Bell (2), The Woodlands (4), Winston Churchill (10), James Bowie (12) 2007 L.D. Bell (1), The Woodlands (4), Stephen F. Austin (8), Richland (9) 2008 L.D. Bell (2) 2009 L.D. Bell (2), Marcus (4), The Woodlands (7), James Bowie (10) 2010 L.D. Bell (3), Stephen F. Austin (9), Cedar Park (10)

8:00 Kennesaw Mountain H.S., GA 8:15 Marian Catholic H.S., IL 8:30 Cedar Park H.S., TX 8:45 Tarpon Springs H.S., FL 9:00 Carmel H.S., IN 9:15 Broken Arrow H.S., OK 9:30 Avon H.S., IN 9:45 Lawrence Central H.S., IN 10:00 Center Grove H.S., IN 10:15 Stephen F. Austin H.S., TX 10:30 L.D. Bell H.S., TX 10:45 Union H.S., OK

Any one remember what the sweepstakes award was? I just found out my alma mater won it back in 79-80 and 80-81.

DCI only has blu ray for 2009 and 2010. Personally, my favorite old school year is 1989. That top 5 is a downright classic!

Thanks for sharing. I'm curious. For those in the know, how does Texas bands rank amongst the other states? I hear Indiana bands are pretty good with Avon leading the way.