Rubisco

I am overjoyed to see the results of these Texas scholastic guards at Dayton! You know, guard in Texas hasn't always been a big thing. There was a time in the now distant past when Marie Czapinski gave clinics at the Texas Bandmasters Association convention to advocate for color guard, because the state was all about drill teams back then. Fast-forward decades later, and Texas is well-represented at Dayton in A and Open finals; nabs a silver medal in A; earns gold with a record score in Open; and achieves their first World class gold medal by a three-and-a-half point margin, the 2nd biggest ever in the Scholastic World class. (The biggest gap was James Logan 2001.) There's talk of adding a guard judge at UIL State for some of the bigger classes. Looking at these Dayton results, I think there are quite a few bands that would appreciate the efforts of their guards being rewarded at State! 👍

It's cool seeing River Bluff and Grain Valley make those jumps up, especially Grain Valley. They both gave outstanding performances. Congratulations to Melissa! Well-deserved medal! And of course to all of the other amazing finalists.

The top 3 at each A class site. Cintas: Pope (93.050), Clovis North (92.900), and Melissa (90.850) Truist: Grain Valley (90.640), River Bluff (90.560), and Tomball Memorial (90.500) I hesitate when comparing scores across two different panels, but it's worth noting that Pope and Clovis North are more comfortably Box 5 than the others. 3rd place looks like more of a question mark.

I haven't watched anything today, but I'm looking at these prelims results like 👀. The Open class ones especially. The Texas units are dominating there. 6 potentially making it into a finals of 15? It's borderline like BOA Grand Nationals, if only it were world class and not open! Round Rock isn't that far away, either. We'll see what happens after semis. There could be some significant shifts. I'm not surprised seeing Little Elm on top over Noblesville based on what I saw earlier, but the two-point gap is unexpected. That's typically an insurmountable gap, but we'll see. Melissa and Tomball Memorial breaking 90 in A class. At least a couple other Texas ones winning their rounds, too. Lots of 89s. We'll see if any of them can make the push onto the podium tomorrow night. That could be challenging. The Woodlands winning world class prelims by 2 points is just about the least surprising result today. Congrats to them in advance. 👍

I don't think there was ever actually a "situation" with Friendswood in TCGC, was there? The decision not to compete in the circuit seems purely a director choice. Klein Oak didn't compete in TCGC, either, when Friendswood's current director won WGI A Class at Dayton with them. Yet Friendswood WAS competing in TCGC until she took the reins. There could be any number of reasons why. Costs, philosophy differences, bad blood, or maybe one of her units got "Twilight Zoned" one too many times, as you say. 😅

What is it, 2007? Didn't Flanagan get the memo? 2025 is all about 30 years of runnin', 30 years of searchin', 30 years of hurtin', 30 years of pain! I honestly think those guards should get together for a group photo at Dayton. 😄

Do they not actually post the final standings on the WGI page? I thought they do, but the page seems to have vanished.

If so, their score would drop to a 91.85. The pre-penalty score would be 91.95. With or without the error, the score hovers around a 92. If I had to guess, they may have had trouble getting everything off of the floor in time. They seemed to really have to scramble after their performance.

Lots of strong performances today in Open, but Little Elm was the clear first place for me. Dense and elegant at the same time. Clean hands throughout on some very tricky phrases, with well-blended movement. They really look like a Dayton medalist. Emerson gives Santa Clara Vanguard 2016 vibes -- the Rumble, Unravel, and Rise show, but with an eerier atmosphere. Like that show, they start backstage and slowly make their way forward. The performers embody the creepy cool character of the show exceptionally well. The white flags with the black stripes look clipped when spun on the white part of the floor. Really interesting effect. Pearland gave a great performance. They have such a lovely, well-staged and choreographed production. The opening with the blue flags is immediate goosebumps. I thought they were cleaner than Emerson when viewed upstairs on Flo, but the content may limit them. Emerson's show is just a bit more interesting and creative compared to the vast majority of scholastic guards this year.

I only caught a few of the guards today, all of them in Scholastic A. I thought Melissa killed it.

What's the process for advancing units to state across the two contests? I can't seem to find it on the website. Is there a set number of guards that advance from each contest, or do they combine all the scores together? The latter seems kind of insane to me, given the inconsistencies we've seen from TCGC judging.

Ah, the forum is back. I thought it might have died for good! Unfortunately, the rankings for all of those units will probably drop even more after next weekend. But there are some other Dayton-bound A class guards that will be at the Southwest Power Regional and could earn high scores at that event. "Playing it safe." That about sums up why I'm not loving most of the world class shows this year. The same criticism you make here could be leveled against Pride of Cincinnati, for example, who have performers who only pick up flags at the very end. And Pride of Cincinnati doesn't have recruiting issues, I can assure you! To put things into perspective: TWHS does more full-ensemble spinning and tossing than Pride of Cincinnati does this year. Let that sink in. Also, maybe that's why you find the TWHS show a little too busy at times. 😉 To my mind, the world class is supposed to be about performers and designers taking big risks. But that doesn't always or even often happen. And perhaps the biggest reason is because the people judging send mixed messages with what they reward. Truly, I think if Paramount had their full 40-member guard cleanly toss and catch 8s on rifle with 3-turns under them, they still might not win equipment over a guard that tosses no higher than small ensemble 6s, as long as that guard does things a little more fast/slow, heavy/light, and so on and so forth -- the subjective "dynamic efforts." It's like when Hebron loses ensemble music performance to Carmel. It is what it is, I suppose. 🤷

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.