Firetail

Should BOA make it like DCI where if there is a tie for first, both groups are awarded 1st?

Congrats to Cy Falls for making it to finals. Is this their first time in BOA San Antonio finals?

Wow, the demand of Cy-Fair's show is incredible, and the students pull it off quite well. In Seven Lakes' show, you can really see the various moods of each movement. I think that this show was very well designed as visual art and music mesh together. In general, the quality of performers in this area is quite high, even more so with the number of bands increased. The students should know that their hard work does not go unnoticed.

Does anyone know which judge was which on the sheets?

Predictions list is up

It'll definitely be a challenge for the judges to keep all the bands straight. Nearly 12 hours of performing bands with a decent amount of breaks. Hopefully, they'll be diligent to give a fair assessment to all bands that day. These kids deserve at least that.

If I am not mistaken, exactly 40 bands have qualified for the Area Marching Contest! This means that 8 bands will advance to state. Very exciting!

Area E has really expanded to include a lot of bands. Area day will be exciting to see all of the different performances. I'm looking forward to what everyone has to offer.

Pearland and Dawson are in Area F competing with schools in north Houston.

Completely forgot about Dickinson, whoops. I actually haven't seen their show either, but they may be able to obtain a spot. They have in the past, but with the realignment, there is a lot of competition, which goes for everyone.

There are a lot of schools that deserve to go to state in this area. Hopefully, there will be enough bands qualifying for area to guarantee 6 or 7 spots to state. The competition will be like the old Area E (CFISD, KISD, and FBISD) with the addition of notable schools such as Friendswood, Clear Brook, and Brazoswood. Schools who show some promise include Cy-Fair and James E. Taylor. Langham and Cy-Falls prove to compete as well as Seven Lakes and Tompkins in Katy. SFA has been very clean and have been improving steadily in the past few years. Friendswood is still a very strong contender even with their mishaps through the season so far. The schools who advance to Area finals have a high likelihood to make state.

With the area realignment, hopefully more bands from the Houston area will be able to qualify for state. There are some great programs that definitely deserve to be recognized.

What a great competition for some of the best bands in the state to show off what they've got. Leander ISD sure has some phenomenal programs. CTJ, as per usual, incredible. Congrats to Vandy for coming out on top. Howard and the staff there are doing a great job advancing the program. It's still early in the season, though, and as always, anything can happen in the coming weeks.

Definitely sticking with my original general predictions. Though the results from the Friendswood contest has me rearranging some of the orders of who could make finals.

Some interesting things to note: Clements's music scores are top tier, tying with SFA's in the music category in prelims. Their visual scores are severely tanking their placement. However, I believe that they'll improve as the season progresses. Pearland dropped from 3rd in prelims to 6th in finals. Musically, they sounded great, but there were some issues with moving the props in their finals performance. Not quite sure what happened. Conversely, Oak Ridge jumped to 3rd in finals. Congrats to them on a great finals run. Clear Brook won percussion awards in prelims and finals, so props to their percussion staff. Seven Lakes' music G.E. compensated for the major front-to-back timing issues that happened in their ballad. Their music scores in general were lower in finals. Loving the new uniforms though. And of course, congrats to SFA for having a killer program and doing very well at this competition! Next week at Conroe is sure to be interesting!