BandAlumMom

I’m not sure what the purpose of this post is. But I feel like we can acknowledge that some areas are especially competitive to make state in without dismissing the accomplishments of bands from other areas.

I agree. I think having a rule makes sense, but I think this one is excessive. I would be in favor of one that required first place from four judges. It might also make sense to have the three judge rule like it is, but require at least one of the other two judges to also rank them higher than the other band - I don’t know. But throwing out the scores of 40% of the judges seems wrong.

Yeah, I guess it seems similar to the “bad judge” rule, but it is specific to area champion. But I know it wasn’t in place in 2018 because I was at the area E contest (full disclosure: my kid didn’t go to Pearland or Clements) and the judging was a big topic of conversation after that. I think this link will work: https://www.uiltexas.org/files/music/6A_Area_E.pdf I really think this is the kind of situation this rule was meant to address.

SV001-Gamer has a good response to this. None of the three schools you mentioned had one judge give them a much lower score than the others - his discussion is spot on. And you should never assume that you’ll place in the same order as previous competitions. Some schools have their show done early but then don’t add as much later, while other schools didn’t have their full show until October and kept adding. Sometimes someone has a less good run. Sometimes the scoring system is different - there are any number of reasons other than “bad judging” that could explain why one band placed ahead of another band one week but behind them another. And if there’s “bad judging”, how do you know it was this week and not the previous contest? The reality is that a lot of schools have really stepped up and the overall quality of bands has improved a great deal in this area the last few years. And the judges are really trying to make sure they get the right bands going to state - so if you’re 13th or 20th or 25th is less important to them than making sure the top five are “correct” at the end. (Yes, I know that sucks.) And a lot of those bands could beat each other on a given day. You just don’t want to read too much into that 20th place: if you worked hard and left it all on the field, you should be proud. And you can keep working on getting better next year.

Call me crazy, but where does that leave judging music ensemble? Surely having a good ensemble sound should be the priority?

It’s not - it’s two judges that ranked them lower, and it’s not that low. I’m guessing this rule was made after incidents like the rather egregious mess in area E in 2018, which was definitely a bad judge situation. (Four judges ranked Clements 1st, one ninth - that same judge ranked Pearland 1st. The other judges had Pearland either 2nd or 3rd, but Pearland was the area champ.) I understand wanting to have a rule for this situation, but it seems to be written in a way that catches other situations that aren’t really a “bad judge”.

Gotcha - that makes sense.

I’m confused - it sounds like you agree with the top five?

So which bands that made state didn’t deserve to? Because if you say that Foster and Fulshear got “robbed”, that necessarily means that you think someone else didn’t deserve to be ahead of them. And since they were 8th and 10th in finals, presumably you mean several bands that were ahead of them didn’t deserve to be. Obviously they did well, as they made finals. But comments like this are by nature an insult to other bands, even if you don’t name them.

Area E had five bands attending state.

Someone showed me a schedule and, if it hasn’t changed, the first band performs at 12:15.

FWIW, Dawson advanced to state in 2022, but not in 2021. So they haven’t really “made it the last few years” more than some of the other schools in this area.

Does anyone know if there are full recaps available? I know they’ve put them out in previous years, but haven’t been able to find them this year.

TexasMusicForms only goes back to 2009, but unless I missed one, the only time they got a 1 at Region was 2019, which wasn’t a state year. Not sure before then.

I managed to write them down: 4 Tomball 5 Clear Falls 6 Summer Creek 7 Grand Oaks 8 Clear Lake 9 Clear Creek