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BOA San Antonio - Finals Ordinal Breakdown


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BOA results for bands also seem to grow positively and linearly throughout a season, so seeing them drop 5 points or so over two weeks was an unexpected result I'm sure. I agree that the competition at this regional was tougher, but I still expected a finals placement out of them.

 

Exactly, I was going to mention that as well. I thought BOA had a system in place where the scores are supposed to be somewhat "absolute," so a 75 at say, BOA Denton, is really the equivalent of a 75 anywhere else, whether it be Conroe or St. Louis or San Antonio or Indy. I even watched Anderson's performance, and I thought it was great. Who knows what the judges saw/heard/thought that constituted a score drop of five and a half points.

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I was really surprised by the rankings of the bands I highlighted above. Did the judges not like something that was done? The execution seemed very high for all of them...

 

Friendswood @ 22nd isn't too surprising. They're only a little behind College Park and they placed ahead of SFA and Hendrickson.....for a band that just missed Finals at the early season Regional, getting around 20th at SA is to be expected.

 

Hendrickson and Cedar Ridge are the ones that really surprise me though. I mean if Hendrickson hadn't gotten 5th at Conroe (which I found surprising personally), I wouldn't be surprised by 29th at all (that's about where I would have had them if we were talking in the preseason). Cedar Ridge though.....all the signs were pointing to this being their breakout year. SFA placing in the 20s seems a little surprising too....especially since they were able to make Finals at Conroe.

 

And Anderson.....they lost by only 1 place to freaking UNION (OK) (a GN Finalist) at St. Louis! (and they beat Richland!). I don't understand how they can drop that much after being at that level only a couple weeks ago without utterly stopping their progress, or just having an absolutely horrible run.

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Friendswood @ 22nd isn't too surprising. They're only a little behind College Park and they placed ahead of SFA and Hendrickson.....for a band that just missed Finals at the early season Regional, getting around 20th at SA is to be expected.

 

Hendrickson and Cedar Ridge are the ones that really surprise me though. I mean if Hendrickson hadn't gotten 5th at Conroe (which I found surprising personally), I wouldn't be surprised by 29th at all (that's about where I would have had them if we were talking in the preseason). Cedar Ridge though.....all the signs were pointing to this being their breakout year. SFA placing in the 20s seems a little surprising too....especially since they were able to make Finals at Conroe.

 

And Anderson.....they lost by only 1 place to freaking UNION (OK) (a GN Finalist) at St. Louis! (and they beat Richland!). I don't understand how they can drop that much after being at that level only a couple weeks ago without utterly stopping their progress, or just having an absolutely horrible run.

 

I know cedar ridge was shocked as well - I honestly don't understand it personally. Those of us in the crowd had felt it was one of their best performances ever. They had cleaned up a whole lot in the last month and even in the last few weeks.

 

Either way, I'm very proud of the kids and what they did accomplish this year.

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Scores were actually relatively consistent across the board except the GE scores, which admittedly, can be heavily impacted by the judge's opinions.

 

Here are a couple of my thoughts. I haven't been in a marching band in 6 years, and it's been 4-5 years since I actually saw any marching band live, so I drove down from Carrollton to watch the finals purely for fun, even though I was sick as a dog! Still well worth it imo!

 

Favorite show of the night went to Round Rock. I'd never seen or heard this band until Saturday night and I was blown away. Their show was so fun and energetic, and I absolutely loved the music from Sweeney Todd, as well as their performance of it. I remember reading that this band was on the rise, and I absolutely believe it now! They were well deserving of their placement. Great job, Round Rock!

 

Claudia Taylor Johnson is another band that wasn't around the BOA scene when I was still in band, so I was very interested in seeing them. They sound HUGE. Their wall of sound is incredible, and their show was wel put together in my opinion. They should do very well at the State competition.

 

LD Bell... The last time I watched LD Bell was their 2007 Ascension show, which to this day remains my absolute favorite show, ever. Their Grand Nationals performance (btw does anyone have a recording of it they'd like to share? =D) was absolutely a tear jerker. I just don't know how I feel about their show this year. It might've been the medicine I was taking, but I just lost interest about halfway through.

 

Marcus is still clean as ever and I still remember their gorgeous ensemble sound. Even with going 2nd, their win was well deserved. This band just needs to go ahead and win Grand Nats and be done with it. I'm pretty sure everyone realizes that they're consistently the best band in Texas. Now they just need to take the crown away from Broken Arrow and Avon and bring the Eagle back to Texas!

 

Westlake opened the night up with a bang! Their show had so much energy that halfway through the show I was thinking, "Holy crap, this is just the first band! They're already so good!" Their closer had everyone on their feet even before the final chord was cut off. Just an incredibly entertaining show all around.

 

And now to my alma mater, Hebron! The last time I was in band, we barely missed out on 4A State (this was in 2006), and we miraculously made Super Regional Finals that year. We were called out as the 14th band in a super stacked regional and we all went nuts. It's so amazing to see them as a top contender with the big dogs now. Their ensemble sound is ridiculously good. It's amazing that you can still pick out the woodwind sounds in chords on a marching field. It's somethign that not a whole lot of bands do these days. Despite the great music, I thought the show was a tad bit flat all around. I don't think they had the same amount of energy as some of the other bands, and there was a bit of tearing in the beginning of the closer with the woodwinds playing Young Person's. Hopefully they clean that up for state. Go Hebron!!

 

I apologize if I didn't get around to your band! These are just some of the ones that stuck out to me. I was very glad to see Ronald Reagan back in the mix after a couple of tough years, and it was very weird for me to NOT see SFA and Churchill in Finals. SFA was always one of my favorite bands so that was a bit surprising. Hopefully they can rebound from this too.

 

All in all, a great finals night, and a whole lot of fun, even though I was shivering and almost throwing up by the end of the night! I'd gladly do it again next year anyway =]

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The whole Anderson thing is a prime example of how insanely deep this regional was, especially compared to BOA St Louis.

 

Yes, I don't think one can say it's "shocking" that Anderson did not make finals. Other than a handful of super elite bands, the pool of very good bands is too deep and there are too many variables on any given performance day. But as one previous poster pointed out, it is odd that Anderson's score dropped as it did from St. Louis. It's possible that Anderson's performance was not quite as good as it was in St. Louis, but I doubt it was that much worse. Something about the show did not resonate as well with the SA judges as it did with the St. Louis ones.

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