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Another regional in the books for this season! Saturday truly was a lovely day all around. The weather was such a rare pleasant event that everyone made sure that the mood felt sweet for all. I also had the lovely pleasure to finally bump into a few folks off the HR forums (4 years in the making!).Very rarely do I get competitions that are just really simply uncomplicated. Katy is such a great venue suited for band, not just because of the logistics, but also the ample amount of volunteers throw themselves into the role belatedly without question from the experienced (and excited) to the curious first-timers. Thank you to the Morton Ranch, Cinco Ranch, and Seven Lakes parents that gave their time to volunteer for this weekend (and sharing some of your stories with me. Some were very special.).A soon-to-be-favorite anecdote from this past weekend: In the morning, a father and his toddler appearing to be on a leisurely walk had strayed off their ordinary route after the toddler was curious about some of the bands near former stadium. They ended up watching bands for a decent amount go through their flow with the toddler wowed. The father was equally impressed too! I don't know if that kid will be in the activity one day, but I like to think the pop too would wholeheartedly jump in, head-first.

Reviving this thread to share my disappointment in finding out that Cy-Fair is not attending.

IT'S REGION WEEK! We have a few contests happening tomorrow, Wednesday, and Thursday, and then most of the regional contests happen on the 14th! We will also find out who from 1A will advance on to the State Marching Contest and who will advance to the State Military Contest! Best of Luck to all bands this week!

I think Wakeland will be in finals. LD Bell and Timber Creek have good shots too. We will see how they do this weekend.

Cy-Fair: Knew the name, never gave another thought. Not anymore, holy smokes! Shenandoah might've been downplayed fairly early on in comparison to other competitions, but Cy-Fair this year brought distinguishment to this title on par with being a single-digit SA Super finalist. Many bands took their shot at My Body is a Cage, but I've found only Cy-Fair as iconic as the original SCV 2018 version. An absolute shame this isn't going to SA this year. CTJ: I'm a bit of a stick in the lake this year apparently, because I find this show to be quite pleasant this year. This feels more of a proper spotlight at the capabilities of the band instead of overwhelm with every relevant thread of thought into 13 min- something I thought the mid-'10s CTJ shows had a lot of tact and style with. Admittedly, the standard for those shows are so high that asking CTJ to meet that with this show is a bit too inappropriate. It is still a nice change of pace for the program. TWHS: Uh..... Holy smokes? Nah, holy blazes!!! You're telling me TWHS missed a majority of summer camp and still had this on the field??? What an absolute treat to get Chick Corea and treat the material with so much respect and detail not just musically, but the integration of drill, props, percussion, body choreography, color guard, and beyond. TWHS is hitting such high marks in achievement and performance in every aspect in this activity in ways other bands aren't. This is exactly why I'm a fan of this activity. What an honor to see TWHS 2023 live. We may be looking at yet another Texan dynasty if this design team keeps pumping up these shows over the next few years. It will be a travesty for this activity on par with the winless Hebron years if TWHS doesn't win any BOA SA, GN, or UIL comps or with this team. And.... That's it! That's all I got to see at Katy this year 😀.

I can cover 4A Region 1 which is the 14th

Some of the Region websites are absolutely brutal to find anything on. I won"t name the one that hides their Region marching schedule like a well hidden Easter Egg! LOL Took me several visits and too many clicks to find.

This is way too brilliant and easy to use. Please make this harder to navigate or read just to be consistent with everything else UIL-related.

Of those 9 you mentioned, I see Round Rock as having the toughest time making finals. They got hammered on visuals at Austin and this is historically their weakest point. The show just lacks excitement with no impacts musically and soloists mic'd too quiet, which is also a persistent issue. This is not a criticism of the kids, but rather one of the directors. Also, there are a lot of contenders for spots this year that have been moving up. I hope they do make it as they definitely have the potential and the ability, but much has to change for that to happen. I think excitement is the key word here. I wish them the best!

I’m excited to see how Dickinson, bwood and clear brook play out this weekend at lone star all three of them are really good

I found this after a while of searching online. Alexander's and United's dominance really shows.

I hope y’all don’t mind but I’m going to go ahead and divert the topic back to last night’s performances because every band was absolutely STUNNING. It would take forever for me to break down every band so I’m just going to run through some of my individual highlights for our top half: First, COPPELL - As a Coppell alum myself, I was utterly floored. I think this is the cleanest performance I’ve ever seen from them this early in the season. The woodwinds were absolutely stellar, especially during their feature in what looks like the show’s part 2. These time signatures are not easy, especially the complex 2+2+2+3 9/8 in part 2 and they executed them wonderfully. And the brass had that nice brilliant, dark ensemble sound that’s begun to become characteristic of them over the last couple of years (I guess we can call this the Coppell sound now). Someone else already said it but Coppell is ABSOLUTELY the powerhouse that we are not yet talking about but that we most definitely should be. Overall super proud of where my alma mater has taken the program and I look forward to seeing what they have to offer in San Antonio (safely) assuming they make UIL State. MARCUS - Don’t get me wrong, the whole show was by far one of the best and most characterful I’ve seen out of Marcus in quite a few years. But holy moly that quad feature was just unhinged. What got me the most was the fact that those were their SNARE players. Those weren’t even their drumline’s dedicated quad players. Absolutely bonkers. WAKELAND - Wow that ensemble sound is what got me. For such a small band (comparatively speaking) they have such an intense and focused brass sound. In some ways it almost reminded me of some of Vista Ridge’s brass sound from their 2022 show last year. Overall I really enjoyed how simple their show was contrasted with a lot of the more artsy shows we saw last night. FLOWER MOUND - Not much to say really. Really clean performance with a show that contrasts nicely with some of the more playful shows that we’ve seen from them the past couple years. I know someone else on this thread already said it but this is definitely going to be a high scoring show time come UIL. Overall classic Flower Mound formula still working wonders on the football field like always. JENKS - If I’m being completely honest, I never really give the Oklahoma bands much thought aside from Broken Arrow. However, listening to Jenks perform last night was most definitely a wonderful surprise to say the least. Everything about their show was just really, really good and well rounded. Good brass, good woodwinds, good percussion, good visuals, great overall show. Overall an absolute pleasure to watch. I’ll definitely make sure to not make the mistake of overlooking Oklahoma bands going forward. HEBRON - I’m just going to completely avoid addressing the elephant in the room and decide not to get into the absurdity that is their music book this year. I swear, it’s like they’re just trying to figure out new ways to one-up themselves with each passing year. Everything else was otherwise Hebron as always. Oh and the Spartacus fanfare in the beginning was a cool touch too. BOTTOM HALF - Everyone was so dang good that I was literally struggling to try to find individual highlights for each band which is why I decided not to list any. Everyone was just so close. I don’t know what to say, this was by far the most stacked bottom half, and top half too for that matter, that I’ve ever seen at this competition in recent years and it was so awesome that each of the 12 finalist bands kept me thoroughly engaged throughout the entire competition. What a privilege to be an audience member, we were definitely eatin’ good last night

I think a lot of people had Lumberton in Finals last year. I really think they could make it this time around. Will have to wait and see.

Your whole argument is based on the idea of marching band being a professional sport. News flash, it ain't. These are teenagers studying algebra, English, history, chemistry, etc. They don't get paid to do any of this. Hebron is the least well-off of Marcus/FloMo/Hebron. As someone else said, SLC and Coppell are also very well off areas of North TX. If your argument that money is the most important metric for the success of a band, then that alone invalidates your claim. Marcus placed 2nd with minimal props, just stupidly good playing and marching. Is that also because of money? Instead of griping and crying about, "OH THE MONEY!", why don't you just sit back and enjoy the amazing products Texas bands put out year in and year out? We're spoiled here in TX. Every competition in TX is a nationals level competition.

Love the Timber Creek AAAA champion, if they can actually pull it off I’ll be so happy for them!

This has been something that's been on my mind for a while, and I don't closely follow band anymore, but a comment thread on a video of Vista Ridge 2023 at LISD Festival of Bands got me ready to type :P. I've observed a recent(-ish?) trend among band programs to "hide" their in-progress shows over the course of the season, only starting to show them once the competitive season gets into the groove and it's impossible to stop people from taking videos at UIL Region/Area/State. I do understand some of the common concerns: Copyrighted music Rough early-season runs may deflate "hype" or negatively affect the opinion of prospective judges that watch them A desire to present only one's "best self" But I do miss seeing week-to-week progress and think it's a loss. Back when I was at VR (2011-2014), we uploaded public videos every single week after each football game (sometimes on the night of! I'd stay up til like 2 AM refreshing YouTube for the video). I also don't buy the common concerns: Most marching band music is either out of copyright, or falls under fair use. Unless the arrangers and drill writers don't want them posted, but they usually wind up being posted at the end of the season anyways so ?? Realistically, no adjudicator with credentials has the time or attention to spend creeping on programs on YouTube. A problem with our modern society (social media, etc.) is that we're too eager to only present our best, polished, often edited self, without reflecting or showing the hard work that led to that point. It's a delightful trip down memory lane for me to look at janky old videos of the shows I marched in (Including one football game where I started the show 10 yards away from where I should've -- miraculously made it back on track somehow). Seeing an awful visual moment just slowly iron itself out over the season (closer diamond set in vista ridge 2013 Scheherazade comes to mind) brings back lots of good memories of working hard for something and getting it just right. I do know that students probably get shown week-to-week videos privately, but they lose access them rather quickly unless they make their own copy. Thoughts? Is this a recent trend? Did it come from DCI? (probably) I know some other schools did it even when I was in high school, but I was happy we didn't.

All 33 UIL Marching Band Regions have finally posted their schedules for the upcoming UIL Region Evaluation period that starts TOMORROW! Region 28 was the last to post. There will be 58 different shows spread across 33 Regions. Use this CALENDAR link to maximize your viewing pleasure for all the shows taking place near you. Or simply jump to the UPCOMING EVENTS page. Enjoy! __________________________________________________ Here's a couple of yesterday's UIL Region Evaluation results. All other's can be found here then selecting CURRENT YEAR> Governing Body> UIL> Marching Band EVALUATION. Using the "Filter" and "Sort" options help find results faster (not available on mobile devices). Results_2023UILRegion054A5A6AMarchingBandEVALUATIONbyCONFERENCE.pdf Results_2023UILRegion041A2A4A5AMarchingBandEVALUATIONbyCONFERENCE.pdf

soooo Pearland then??? lol

i mean i think they're the front runner right now, they could easily easily steamroll over both carmel and twhs in all the music captions. nobody else has that combo of difficulty and achievement, i mean it's like they're Simone Biles or something lol. on the other hand i think carmel and twhs are currently a little more well-rounded having very high level music + visual + design (+ guard). Hebron has over a month to work on the vis stuff tho, so that could eeeasily shift late season. and again their music is so strong it might not even matter.

I personally feel better about The Woodlands compared to Hebron here. Depsite the absolutely ridiculous music Hebron is pulling off on the field (again), I'm just not really sold on the visual package as well as the show itself. I don't think music can carry them in Indy, considering Carmel, TWHS, as well as Avon to an extent also play really well. Houston bands also win every year ending in a 3 sooooo

This is the same order I would pick as of today, but I'm going to wait until after the Region 9 competition (Tues, Oct 17th) to make final predictions. A few of these bands still haven't performed their full show and I hope to see most of them in person again before Area.

I agree- I think the DFW and Houston bands will have Austin area bands like Leander and Westwood on the outside looking in

I got all of Area B 6A and Area F 5A covered which consists of Regions 5, 20, 30, and 31

I agree, I think Wakeland is the favorite. There will be several bands in contention for medals here though.

Oh yeah, when I said "these past few years", I meant prior to 2022. But yes, "Downtown" was probably one of my all time favorites shows. I'm really excited to see what they can do with "Tag Team". But I still think they will do well with BOA and UIL at the same time.

Oh! I almost forgot, if any of yall know/have the results for the following contests, please share them! Seguin Marching Festival (September 23rd) Cypress Marching Showcase (September 30th) Mesquite Marching Festival (September 30th) I'm having the hardest time finding any sorts of results from these 3 events.

Hey yall! We are making our way into the start of the Prestigious UIL Process of the season, and I just wanted to make this statement. Any Regional events that get submitted will get declined as Region is not a competition between other bands. It should get renamed to UIL Regional Evaluation. Now come Area, that is where the actual competition will start. Thanks for understanding and have a wonderful Monday!

From what i've seen so far - 1st - Woodlands Bluecoats Drum Corps 2nd - Klein Oak 3rd - College Park 4th - TMHS 5th - North Shore First out - Oak Ridge/Klein Cain/Spring I think the 5th spot for advancing to state will be super competitive between North Shore or Oak Ridge. North Shore's shows are very much designed for UIL judging and this year is one of the better designed shows they've had musically. The brass and woodwind passages are very clean and bright and I think if they don't make it, it would probably be from how their drill is written. When they made 10th in state finals in 2016, they were easily one of my favorite shows from that year. Similar to North Shore - I have Oak Ridge MAYBE falling out really because it's lacking so hard on drill and just show difficulty, but I could see them placing decently high on music which could get them in 5th. From what i've seen from Tomball Memorial at BOA Katy, they have a very BOA focused show - The show is incredibly difficult and complex and the amount of people in the band is HUGE. However, I did notice that the show seems individually dirty with the marching - but the guard and shapes being made with the drill were fantastic. Even though the judging system is different, it's important to know that at BOA Katy prelims, they got 3rd in Vis GE behind Reagan and The Woodlands, beating CTJ, Cy-Fair and Pearland. That is beyond crazy for a band just recently dipping their toes in BOA. There is plenty of time to clean the drill up and i'm sure with the weather clearing up they'll make alot of progress (if clean enough maybe they could sneak into that top 3 bubble😆). 2nd could go between Klein Oak and College Park. I have no doubts College Park could take 2nd place with music because they sound fantastic and their music book is great, but Klein Oak already has a much more clean, more complex and difficult show in terms of content design, drill and music. From what I saw at Conroe, it sort of reminds me of early Marcus where they focus on filling the field with a more balanced symphonic tone - which is what UIL judges usually like. 🙂

It'll be exciting to see if dickinson will be able to overtake clear brook at this competition. I've heard good things about them, but since they don't really compete in boa competitions it's hard to tell where they will place.

If Vandegrift goes down to 5A, and CP goes up to 6A, Vandegrift will most likely have a few medals lol

This Saturday we will have some schools qualify for the state contest! Here will be a list of schools that received a 1 rating: Baird Claude Cross Plains D’Hanis Irion County Knox City McDade Menard Munday Pettus Runge Santa Anna still on-going results*

Also, it feels really strange to me that this contest comes after UIL State. I'm not used to this timeline! It also makes me wonder if that changes the calculus at all. For example, it seemed like Marcus got a bit of a second wind after their success at State in 2021, going on to win the music caption in semifinals at Nationals and placing over bands that beat them handily at BOA San Antonio.

sucks that we're missing a good number of DFW + Houston contenders but the contest is still ludicrously competitive. sooo ive seen everyone now. i count 9 bands id be surprised to see miss finals. Cedar Park, Round Rock, Vista Ridge*, Cedar Ridge, Rouse*, Vandegrift*, Ronald Reagan*, Marcus*, and The Woodlands*. asterisks next to the 6 strongest bets for top half finalists. weird weird weird for me not to include CTJ as a lock, im betting they surge late season tho for a comeback and make finals here. iiif that happens that leaves only 4 spots for a ton of good bands which totally sucks. id give the edge to the Austin and DFW bubbles for now. they just sound better than the Houston ones atm and music counts for more of the score. it's harsh to say but not a single band i heard live at West Houston sounded like a really really top-notch Texas band, besides maybe twhs, but they had issues w/ trumpets struggling in the upper register, Mello and flute tuning, and that really weirdly balanced/phrased small woodwind ensemble where it sounded like every instrument was doing their own thing lol. so yeah, Houston groups need to get those music scores up to match the vis if they wanna make a splash here, reeeeally pulling for Bridgeland. at the same time some of the scores at DFW and Austin were a bit inflated, not gonna sugarcoat it, almost all of which came from relatively inexperienced BOA judges, so id be even more cautious than usual comparing scores across contests. gonna be interesting for sure. always is.

He also recently joined on to be the 2024 drill designer for The Cavaliers (DCI)! https://cavaliers.org/staff-bod/mason-daffinee

Something else to mention is that Pearland goes on first in Finals, that spot never is favorable.

This will be an unpopular opinion. Honestly watching these groups the past few weeks. Here is my order 1st. Dawson 2nd. Pearland 3rd. Clear Brook 4th. Dickinson 5th. B-Wood 6th. Austin 7th. Shadow Creek 8th Pasadena Memorial 9th Clements 10th Clear Falls First let me say Pearland is fantastic. But there is a lot of dirt in the show still. UIL is all about clean. The could care a little less about show design on the area level. In BOA Pearland will dominate I can’t wait to see them at grand nats finals if they can get clean they will be in the top 6 for sure. Maybe even medal!! As of right now Dawson is more clean at the moment. They achieve the drill well and play fantastic. The music they are asking of the performers is very challenging and they are doing it a great level. Now at state Pearland will probably be ahead of Dawson because of the variety of captions. That are offered there compared to area. The 3-5 in my placements This could obviously change. But these groups are fantastic!! I’m really excited to see how this plays out!!

Hope to be there with y’all 😉

It’s gonna be a tight race between Lumberton, Sulpher Springs, and North Lamar, I would love to see Lumberton come out on top.

Random order: Pearland, Dawson, Clements, SFA, Dickinson, Clear Brook, Brazoswood, Shadow Creek, Pasadena Memorial, Clear Falls

Wow! United hasn't won the Uisd Festival since 2016. A historic year for them so far!

I march at Canton, we were able to watch Lumberton in the dome last year, it they were really loud, we all had them at 7-8th in prelims when we were predicting, hoping they see success this year!

Their drill writer is one of their former band directors, Mr. Daffinee. I heard he started writing their drills several years ago while he was assistant band director. He does a great job!

To say there’s not a financial component to BOA success would be denying the existence of the elephant in the room, but there are so many other factors at play as well- the most important of which is performance quality. Regardless of financial status, ALL of the students last night did a wonderful job! If we’re talking about money, I think it should be to highlight programs that are able to break through the money differential. For example, Bell was the only school in finals with a majority of their students classified as economically disadvantaged, and they placed the highest in the bottom six! Truly a feat for that program. To reduce a program’s performance to money alone is definitely not a fair argument- all students work ridiculously hard to overcome a plethora of obstacles.

Well now that BOA dfw is over, here are my final predictions! I know that just like yesterday, many, MANY, bands deserving of finals won't get in because of the depth of this contest, probably deeper that Bedford this year. I'm very excited to be able to be here live, both prelims and finals, and will do coverage on all the bands both rounds (assuming I don't forget my portable charger again like I did for Wylie 🫠) I'm making these predictions both off of past results from this season and the assumption that some bands will have more of their show on the field and be cleaner. Also, something else to note is that it would seem per composition suite that Poteet HS could be AAA, not AA, although it's not 100% confirmed, so I'll assume they are still AA until further confirmation. But anyways, here we go with the predictions: 1st. Wakeland (visual/GE) 2nd. Keller (music) 3rd. Timber Creek.... I Believe! 4th. L.D. Bell 5th. Southlake 6th. Prosper 7th. Keller Central 8th. Duncanville.... I have high expectations/ hopes for them 9th. Waxahachie 10th. Rockhill 11th. Mckinney Boyd 12th. Forney A Champion- Whitesboro (caption sweep) AA 1st. Lovejoy (caption sweep) 2nd. Grapevine 3rd. Poteet AAA 1st. Wakeland (caption sweep) 2nd. Forney 3rd. Robert. E. Hendrickson AAAA 1st. Timber Creek (GE) 2nd. Keller (music) 3rd. L.D. Bell (visual)

I think we’ll see some moves by Gatesville this season, more surprisingly though-My wild card prediction this year is Boerne,they made finals last year for the first time in a while, and came out of the gate swinging this season beating Fredericksburg at their first competition.

You know, I think its time to post Lumberton now. They are on fire so far this season. Winning their class at Galena Park and then today winning Grand Champion at Battle at the Bridges Contest in Bridge City. Definitely a strong bubble band for State Finals. P.S. They are not quite done with their show yet.

Finals Results: CG: Wylie High Percussion: Frisco Heritage Visual: Wylie High Music: Wylie High 10th Melissa 9th Plano Senior 8th Frisco Heritage 7th Walnut Grove 6th Highland Park 5th Plano East 4th Lewisville 3rd Argyle 2nd Wylie East 1st Wylie High

Alright, so with Region happening very soon, it would be a good time to announce that in total, there is 1,029 varsity bands competing at Area this year! 39 other bands are Non-Varsity, bringing the total to 1,068 bands!

On the side note, Bridgeland seems to really be gaining some ground here, placed 19th right below woods at 18th, I really think they are going to be a Houston powerhouse, right next to woods who is hopefully going to be a Houston powerhouse, and it seems like those two will be battling it out almost every year at the same level placing 1 place above or below each other.