bchorn

Doesn't having a marching band at the game add to the overall atmosphere of a playoff game? If so, why would Nebraska want to mess with that? Probably why you hear a lot about Texas high school football and not much about Nebraska high school football.

I recently just rediscovered the Carolina Crown 09 show and would love to hear that in blu-ray quality sound. I am just not a big fan of the blue devils show that year. of course, i haven't seen anything from 2010. thanks for you comments.

I want to buy a blu-ray of the DCI finals and need helping picking a year. I saw 2009 in the theaters but missed 2010 because of satellite issues in my theater. So if you had to pick between the two years (2009 and 2010), which one would you get?

they also had the best pre-show of all the bands. I couldn't believe that vocalist was live.

yes, and I'll say it again just to be perfectly clear. I'm not faulting the judges for being inconsistent here. I think Round Rock had a really good show that didn't line up with the criteria laid out by UIL. As such, that left a lot of room for the judges to interpret how RR should be ranked and therefore their ranks were all over the place.

I wasn't slamming the judges when I put this list together. My point was to highlight the shows that the judges clearly agreed upon (i.e. Marcus being #1 and the Area G schools being ranked last) as well as highlight the shows that judges clearly didn't agree upon. There are many posts on this thread about Round Rock and why they probably received inconsistent judging because their show didn't fit the criteria that the UIL judges are suppose to judge with.

With all the talk about inconsistent judging, I thought I would run some numbers to rank the bands by judging consistency. In other words, lets rank the bands by how much agreement there was with all the judges via their ranks. To do this, I took the lowest music rank (using Coppell as an example that would be 17) and then the highest music rank (a 2 for Coppell) and then subtracted the two for the Music Consistency rank. Then I took the lowest marching rank and subtracted the highest marching rank to get Marching Consistency Rank (for Coppell that would be 2 and 3). I then added the two together for a Judging Consistency rank. If you look at the results, you will see (surprise!) the two time defending state champion had almost unanimous agreement by the judges of Marcus' rank of 1. So one might infer that Marcus has mastered the art of putting a show together that will be liked by the judges down to a science. After Marcus, you can see that the judges pretty much all agreed where the Area G schools ended up in the prelims. At the other end of the ranking would be schools that judges varied wildly amongst each other. I am a huge fan of Round Rock's show but there's something about the show that judges couldn't get an agreement on when they judge it. For example, one judge had them 5th in music and another had them 24th. For marching they were ranked of 5th and 25th. (24-5)+(25-5)=39. Keller tied them as well for judging inconsistency. Rank School Music March Total 1 Marcus 2 1 3 26 Harlingen 1 3 4 35 Alexander 4 1 5 32 Donna 3 2 5 30 Taft 5 1 6 34 Saginaw 5 1 6 33 O'Connor 5 1 6 4 Hebron 6 1 7 8 Berkner 4 3 7 24 Cypress Woods 8 0 8 2 Bell 6 2 8 10 Westlake 9 0 9 13 Johnson 8 1 9 7 The Woodlands 8 1 9 5 Duncanville 3 6 9 36 Americas 2 8 10 6 Bowie 11 0 11 29 Coronado 4 7 11 27 North Shore 9 3 12 25 Hanna 7 5 12 12 Reagan 3 9 12 18 Westfield 9 4 13 17 Anderson 14 1 15 22 Clements 12 3 15 23 Cypress Falls 6 9 15 3 Coppell 15 1 16 11 Brazoswood 14 2 16 14 Rowlett 11 5 16 28 Lopez 9 7 16 20 Langham Creek 7 9 16 31 Hanks 3 13 16 9 Spring 17 6 23 21 Pearland 13 12 25 15 Haltom 21 8 29 19 Keller 15 24 39 16 Round Rock 19 20 39

I was surprised that Brazoswood didn't make the finals. They missed the finals by one spot.

I think there's a lot of truth to this. The scores RR received at Area and State were consistently inconsistent. In the Area prelims, they were ranked 21 1 5 in music. In the Area finals, they were ranked 3 8 6 in music. In the State finals, they were ranked 24 5 17 in music. So with such a disparity in rankings, that could be an indicator that the music selection is not every judge's cup of tea. That doesn't mean the students performed it poorly. In fact, I've been a big big fan of the RR show all season long. It just means that maybe RR take a different direction with their music selections for next year's show.

Yeah, but Bell was the fifth band to perform in the morning (at 8:30) and that didn't hurt them.

What's the name of the overture they start with? I owned a CD with this overture back in the 90's but I can't seem to remember its name.

Now I get to answer my own question. Average prelim rankings by region. Region Rank B 6 C 8 D 12 F 16 E 22 A 30 G 30

Color me surprised that Westlake is the Area D band along with Bowie to advance to the finals. CT Johnson, Reagan and Round Rock were all good enough to advance to finals today. Of course, I didn't get to see Westlake because I left before played because I've seen them twice this year and I had to drive back to Austin. So maybe played better than when I've seen them previously. Edit: I'll share my thoughts from watching the prelims later once I have time to write them down.

I'm not so sure it's randomness. Pfulgerville marched placed 6th at Westlake behind Bowie, Round Rock, Anderson, and Akins. Westlake performed as exhibition and Westwood placed 9th. Throw in the three San Antonio bands and McNeil (who were all at BOA Woodlands that weekend) at Area and you can see how Pfulgerville dropped to a tie with Westwood at 10th place.

I saw your performance at Westlake and after I watched it I felt you guys still had a lot of polishing to do on an otherwise complex and entertaining show. Sounds like the extra weeks since Westlake has allowed you to smooth out those rough spots. I look forward to seeing your show next week at (yikes!) 7:30am.

What's worse for O'Connor is that they placed 8th at Westlake Marching Festival behind Bowie, Round Rock and Anderson, Akins (7th in area finals) and Pflugerville (11th in area prelims). So hopefully they've improved their show since then.

I went to Area D Saturday night and finally had some time to record my thoughts from what I saw. 1. Bowie

The finals will start that evening at 6:45pm according to Ticketmaster. The 5a schedule posted is for the prelimaries. You can purchase a ticket for the preliminaries or the finals for $17. If you want to go to both the prelims and the finals, you can buy a combined ticket for $28. If you go to ticketmaster and search for UIL, you will see where you can buy the tickets (all of which are general admission)

I have a related question. When are marching shows conceived? My guess is that most of the work takes place in the spring.

Also, i'm curious if someone could rank the 5A areas. From what I've read on here, it seems like B is on the top and G is on the bottom. not sure about in between.

how many of you are planning on attending 5a prelims? I'm considering taking the day off to drive down from Austin to watch it myself.

its the first time in the history of the school that Anderson has qualified for state.

Anyone notice the crazy J1 judge for music? The other 2 judges rank included in parenthesis. Copperas Cove 8th (21st and 19th) Seguin 9th (23rd and 27th) Austin 11th (25th and 32nd) CT Johnson 12th (2nd and 8th) Round Rock 21st (1st and 5th)

Their current director is in his fifth year as director of bands. Here's the link. http://www.andersontrojanband.com/Band_Con..._Bios_Zysk.html From what I hear, the students have been working very hard this year with State as the goal.

I'm actually a fan of their show. Yeah, it's a little more theatrical than most shows and maybe that will hurt them end but I like it because it's theatrical. Also, when you have an all-state percussion section that's as good as they are, it's probably a good idea to feature them. Especially since they pretty much stand on the rear sideline for most of the first movement. I went to Westlake Marching Festival as well and I completely agree with your takes on Anderson, Akins, and Westlake. I really liked McNeil last week at regionals...their sound is just fantastic!