Rubisco

I'm actually most excited to see some of these DFW guards we haven't gotten a glimpse of yet. In particular, I'm hopeful that Emerson kills it in their new class and is in the running for Dayton finals. Texas scholastics are all quite strong this year, it seems. I wish we had an Independent World guard to match! Of course, I'm still looking forward to seeing Mirage and Menage. I bet they've made lots of improvements since that first regional. 👍

I agree. There's quite a lot of pressure placed on judges in WGI to conform to the overall consensus opinion. Few want to risk being the "weird one", because that means potentially tough conversations with both the team and the chief judge. We see this pressure between rounds a lot, too. Look at the A class results from Austin, for example. 1st place in finals was The Woodlands, but look at their prelims results. Yes, most of the judges had them 1st overall in prelims, too, but the two who didn't: Movement with a 20th place overall, and one of the GE judges with a tie for 13th overall. Both of them are new or relatively new to WGI, and both drastically fell in line after finals despite judging the exact same captions -- moving the unit up to 2nd and 1st, respectively. How much do you want to bet that those two judges saw the prelims results (or just the finals schedule) and went, "Uh-oh!" Happens all the time! This, of course, could lead us to argue that prelims results shouldn't be released before finals, and that the finals schedules should be randomized, to improve judging autonomy.

I loved it when the stage finally opened up in Undaunted's show and the bronze and blue flags came swirling out. So beautiful. The song is absolutely amazing. Somebody on one of her YouTube videos commented that she's like a cross between Nina Simone and Sufjan Stevens. Apt!

Guard programs in general don't have the same infrastructure in place that overall band programs do, which leads to inconsistencies from year to year. A lot of guard programs don't have great vertical teams, or even existent vertical teams, for example. Plus, funding can sometimes be a bit iffy. So, the talent ends up being not-so-stable from year to year. Not to mention that being a guard director itself isn't always the most stable job.

That is quite a huge number for March 2nd, and may indeed indicate that they're in the wrong class!

I'm catching up on the A guards as well. I think opening with a drop may have rattled Jordan a little bit. Their prelims run was much stronger. TWHS, on the other hand, had a stellar run, which could give them the edge in this class, where excellence gets weighted more heavily. I'm thinking we see some what/how ordinal splits again.

I'm side-eyeing that score a little bit, too. 🤔 On the whole, I think the judges did a fine job today. My disagreements regarding placements or scores are fairly minor. There were so many wonderful performances. My personal favorites include Veterans Memorial, Lockhart, TWHS A, Jordan, James Bowie, Pearland, Friendswood, Flower Mound, and TWHS World. I thought Flower Mound in particular really stepped it up from last year. Plus, those movable dots are just about the coolest things ever from upstairs!

The various scholastic A classes in the local circuits, like AA, A, and National A, should be comparable, as long as the scores are rendered by the same panel at the same contest. They use the same sheets. National A is simply for the higher scoring ones -- the ones most ready for National competition, I suppose.

Me, too! I'm finally going to get to watch a live show from Texas! Also, the contest that has Paramount and Etude, I believe. There are lots of awesome groups traveling to Austin this weekend. Almost like the WGI version of a state championship, if we had just a few more of those top DFW guards here. Nevertheless, there's stiff competition in both Scholastic A and Scholastic Open. I genuinely don't know who will win either class! (It certainly doesn't help that I've seen very few of them. 😅)

There's no clear way to compare the scores between the various classes, if that's what you mean. Even between Independent and Scholastic in the same class (like Scholastic A versus Independent A) scores can't be directly compared. Typically, pretty much always, if a guard is reclassified to a higher class mid-season, their scores will drop a bit, since the standards are higher in that class. Do NTCA scores relate to WGI scores? Well, they use the same sheets with the same box criteria, so you'd think there should be some overlap there, but often the scores and placements moving from local circuits to WGI can be QUITE different. I have noticed that local circuit judges will often "fall in line" with WGI after there has been a WGI contest, although even that doesn't always happen, as we saw at TCGC Pearland this past weekend.

I somewhat agree about the "message shows". On the other hand, I respect people whose mode of artistic communication is more direct or even confrontational, especially since it does risk being called out by people like us for its lack of subtlety. For me, more than anything, watching the Scholastic Worlds from this past weekend, I find myself wishing for more "up-tempo" shows. Much of what we've seen is quite slow or mid-tempo. I would prefer more variety.

Thank you so much! I've been starving! Also, look at the equipment and movement judges flipping out over TWHS World in that video. Wow! 😆Can't say I blame them. Judges are just about the biggest fans of the activity, after all. 😃 I've only watched a couple of the Opens, but I'm already confused by the scoring, I will admit. Pearland has a wonderful show!

I think Arcadia looks really clean for this point in the season, besides a few drops here and there. And yes, they move wonderfully. I like that they're sort of keeping with last year's playful, quirky vibe. Will the octopus show become the new spider show for bands and guards everywhere? We shall see. I do see where you're coming from about the soundtrack. I think last year's was better. I also think last year's concept was a bit stronger, with the blindness motifs. But it's all still very well-crafted. It feels very fluid and connected throughout.

What is the music there?

Also, it should be noted that this contest was missing one of its effect judges.

They will be seeded 6th, I believe. I saw that! Happy for them. They'll be seeded 1st place nationally. There are still many contenders who have not yet competed in WGI, however. By the end of next week, I think we'll have a better idea across all the classes. Even then, there will be a few stragglers who pop in later.

I can't find the full video anymore, too. It must have been deleted or moved to private. I don't see any videos on the Google drive, either. 🤔

I was getting excited for this one, then I remembered that NOTHING is being streamed this weekend. 😭

There's an okay video on YouTube now. I disagree with this, actually. I find it rather reductive. There's clearly an elevated, intellectual quality throughout -- a quality of strangeness. Wonderful attention to detail as well. Furthermore, I disagree with your "skills of flexibility" statement. There are so many in this show! It's just that there's so much going on at once, you might miss them. I'm dazzled by them, yet again. Perfect? No. Definitely room for improvement. But no other high school guard achieves from top-to-bottom like they do. No other high school guard asks so much from ALL of their members. None of that, "Oh, here's our one girl who can do fouette turns! Front and center!" or "Oh, here's our three girls who can roll under their tosses! Front and center!" With TWHS, you get a dozen or more at once, and they're friggin' clean. That should count for something. 🤷

@packwick, I appreciate your valuable insights. But please also find the time to upload the videos somewhere private, because some of us are parched. 🥵

Utterly shocked by the news of the shooting at the percussion event. An 81-year-old shooter, too? So bizarre. Hope everyone recovers, both physically and mentally.

Ah, I thought you might be at the Houston one. I was hoping for some videos. 😭

Has Little Elm medaled in Open before? I feel like they were in SW at one point.

Darn, I missed it, before it was removed. 😭

Scores are nice and all, but videos or streaming would be much better. It's hard to have any truly meaningful conversations about the activity without them. 😢