Vidal28

Region 31 Haltom, Coppell, Carroll, LD Bell, Trinity (5) copied from another post, as you can see, minus penalizations, all these groups are automatic 1’s haha

Results tend to be more predictable in finals, There are several contenders for first and definitely undeniable state locks. I think this will also be a more tame UIL than normal, drama wise in my view, aided by the fact that there’ll be 7 state spots which feels right for Area B, after having only 5, then 6 in recent years!

Did Area B prelims, then Area C finals last year, both contests were fantastic. What you notice when it comes to differences between both areas is very interesting when you observe it. Area B’s bands last year were really really well-balanced, in the pocket with their musical programs last year, whereas Area C’s finalists later that night were all running and gunning, me and my friend were shocked with all the output you were able to get from bands like Rockwall, Sachse, Boyd, Wylie, and of course bands like Hebron and FloMo were plenty explosive too, that goes without saying, it very much felt like you were watching some drum corps live with all the output of sound the bands put out that night! Area B was much more mellow in comparison! Haha

I’m not necessarily ranking the advancing groups in my post, I’m just going through the contenders, and generally for UIL, Keller do more than fine, plus they also have a week of rehearsal time still! The contest isn’t tomorrow🙃 I don’t anticipate them being in jeopardy for State at all, they’re still locks in my eyes. I feel pretty good about all the bands I believe will advance and that probably should be the consensus 7 for most that will advance from area, they all are performing really well! With UIL and the ordinal scoring of course, there’s room for unpredictability and uncertainty. But I think this one should be pretty straightforward. These 7 have definitely separated themselves

BOA is an entirely different contest than UIL Area, one would definitely predict Bell, Coppell, Waxahachie, Timber Creek are probably locks to make it in at this point. Keller is too, probably, but you just haven’t seen them beat any of these groups ahead of them. That’s 5. Then after that it’s Keller Central and SLC that you would imagine are the smart bets to round out the 7 groups that go to state(assuming we get 7, I believe there will be). I haven’t seen Duncanville’s show but the feedback viewers got from their performance was positive. I think their placement at Prosper came to the surprise of many, definitely don’t think they’re out of the state discussion, but yeah, the betting money would be on the 7 groups I already mentioned. Gonna be hard to take any of them out

Well I’ll be darned. I see that now. And it looks like GE heavily determined placements, even more so than usual. The allocation of points were a bit unbalanced imo, seeing that Wakeland performed really well in the performance captions in prelims, placing first in both, but being rated nearly two whole points lower in GE placed them third. That’s just wonky to me This was mainly a prelims issue though, GE was kinda all over the place in finals, interestingly enough

The band that was better and 1st overall just happened to be 3A class champion, so they weren’t first in prelims, at least that’s what I would believe. Likely 2nd overall in prelims. In finals, they got bumped down a tad to a still very respectable 4th overall, nothing too crazy really.

This has been a very fantastic lower half to start off!!!

Oh yeah of course, very important to do so, I simply mean I was wondering what the overarching opinion was. And yeah, hopefully they can dig deep this final month and really rough out the edges they have, not easy to do, but they cater well towards UIL, not much they would have to change for that besides improving on execution. The brilliance of their sound needs to be finer tuned to really make heads turn at Grand Nats though!

I don’t know what folks thought about Keller’s prelims performance and how it went but I think their finals run went really well! My biggest complaint is the blend they have at their peak output, very important that they get that fixed so that they’re an undeniable product musically

Don’t think many saw 3A play out the way it did!

Really surprised that’s how it went down, but congrats to those groups! Maybe it’ll be helpful for all to be top half!

Not really a fan of that tbh!! Would rather programs be more collaborative with their designers instead of being shoved a show and be told, “here, do this”🙃

Not surprised to hear there’s been cleaning!

It’s happening!

Very fantastic feat for this area, they’ve been agonizingly close to having that 7th spot for the last several cycles now!

Desoto, Lake Highlands, Nimitz, and Duncanville are the remaining bands, all of them managed to make it to Area last year, some are less certain than others, but there is definitely cause to be optimistic!

Lot of Area C present as well, aside from the obvious big boys from LISD too haha

Better than normal showing from Region 5, the possibility of 7 state bands at Area B is the best it has ever been, we’ll see if the other regions can maintain and not slip up!!

Watching many of the top DFW bands this past weekend was a treat, all-around fantastic performances from the finalists, the same should be the case for many of the groups attending Prosper this weekend!

I definitely would rate Wakeland to have a much higher likelihood of making finals here than either Bell or TC at the moment, much of what they have is out there and already being performed at a fantastic level, the demand they display in the other captions is high. There is still quite the large bubble at this contest as always so there will be some deserving groups that just miss out!

I want to say also, in fairness, Martin made Area Finals in 2014 and 2016, so not nearly the gap of a decade that I’ve seen be said a few times. I’d say that with those bands, if you look at what else they’re doing to improve, you can easily see how they got the result they got here, Mansfield was good last year, was very impressed with their concert UIL bands having seen them both this past spring. Fossil Ridge nearly made UIL Area finals last year being one spot out. It’s all about continuous development, and I think there’s a bit of that lacking at Martin as of late.

As an alumni as well(2014-2018) there’s a lot more than a simple director change that’s had an impact on how they’ve been as of late. For the last decade Martin hasn’t been a stranger to director turnover so there’s a lot that has to happen at all levels of the program, down to the JH feeders where positive upswings in whatever result you’re after start there. And that can only be brought about with time, stability, and change for the better

Flower Mound was not a lock for medal contention at that time, so just solid stuff from L.D Bell there haha

I think Coppell would’ve been ever so closer to FloMo had they had a better start(great middle and finish though), thought the opener went significantly better in prelims, but I’m curious to see what everyone earned in prelims too!