TWHSParent

Agreed. This contest is always an outstanding one to watch as the battle for a finals spot is very intense.

Very quiet on this front (almost no posters from the Houston area), so since I am starting to feel much better I thought I would post the schedule from MFA: 0800 Oak Ridge 0815 Grand Oaks 0830 Brazoswood 0845 Pearland 0900 Bridge City 0915 Break 0945 Conroe 1000 College Park 1015 Cy-Fair 1030 Bridgeland 1045 Klein Oak 1100 Sachse 1115 Break 1200 Porter 1215 Magnolia 1230 Paetow 1245 Cypress Woods 1300 Dawson 1315 Keller Central 1330 The Woodlands 1345 L. V. Berkner 1400 Sandra Day O'Connor 1415 Break 1445 Stephen F Austin 1500 Spring 1515 Wylie East 1530 Seven Lakes 1545 Klein Cain 1600 James E. Taylor 1615 Dripping Springs

I am home from my nearly 1 month stay in the hospital. Lots of OT and PT ahead, but while they had me cracked open they did not find anything other than the aorta issue. With that fixed I expect things continue to improve day to day. Here is a research article on the repair that was done to me: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022522312015139 FYI, I was driving when this happened, so I had a nasty 1 car accident when I passed out about 0.5 miles from home. No major issues from the accident as my car did a great job protecting me when I went flying off the road into a pole. I was transported by ambulance to one hospital where they figured out the issue, then air lifted to a second where they performed the surgery. This happened July 9th, and my first waking memory after the issue is from around July 21st.

Hi all. I had my aorta dissect a few weeks ago. Fortunately it did not explode so I had enough time for an ambulance ride then a helicopter ride when they figured out the problem. Then got stuff fixed and am on the road to recovery.

I agree. And Forest Hills is in the Cincinnati area, so not that far from Indy. They had 3 or so regionals in 2019 (Louisville, Columbus, and Muncie) within a couple hours, plus the Indy super. They took the trek to GN but it isn't as big a hit as from farther away.

While not a TX band, I think Forest Hills Schools, OH made GN semi-finals in 2019 without attending any other BOA contests.

Absolutely - but everyone seemed stuck on the missing classes as the main reason, when it was probably something else that the program has to deal with. The path is both curvy and bumpy!

Of course attending BOA San Antonio does not have to mean that you miss any class time. DFW bands are far enough out to get Saturday timeslots (DFW is farther away than Houston). TWHS goes for Saturdays to minimize the time out of classes, even if it means being at the school at 3 am to catch the buses.

I believe I saw over the weekend that TWHS has 6.

Saw a post at Hornrank that Pearland is going. Anyone here that can confirm? I hope they do.

Some classic tunes would be by Rush - 2112 and Cygnus X-1 Book 1: The Voyage. Cygnus X-1 Book 2: Hemispheres may be too "Earthy" but worth a listen if you have time. These are all long form songs so range from 10 to 20+ minutes each.

Sigh. I'll be living in Arizona by then, so I'll miss all the in-person contests in Texas...

Banddad84 didn't reference stats, he referenced data. There is a difference. The data is what it is, the statistics that are derived from it are where most of the games are played. Of course games can be played with data, but that is different from the stats games (straight up lying vs lying via cherry picking). In banddad84's reference, the data most likely has not been falsified as it is actually fairly easy for your opponents to check up on you since this isn't experimental data.

Unfortunately.....

I hope you kept that gerbil well fed!

Shame the comic isn't updated any more. Last one was in 2012.

You can still check the lists on the leaderboard - when you get to the leaderboard, click on the Top Members tab. It defaults to overview. Just click that for a drop down and select Most Posts.

Don't forget North Shore! Lots of Houston bands that are good/very good, but not quite (at least consistently) at the SA/UIL finalist tier. That's why I enjoy the Houston Regional so much even though there aren't so many at that higher tier. It makes for a very interesting contest.

The current measuring stick in the Houston area for state finals/BOA Grand National finals would be to at least match The Woodlands consistently year over year. It has been many years since a Houston area band did this. While the number of outstanding bands is growing, the number of finalist spots at those events is not (or at least not as fast as the programs are growing). TWHS tends to be a mid-pack finalist most of the time recently, so being on that level would be a strong indicator of success. Exceeding that level would be even better, of course. My expectation is that TWHS will take what they learned last year (and the previous years) with a program that pushed their boundaries and grow again. They are being pushed harder at the state and national level to remain relevant. I think the program is capable of responding to this, and can really push farther to catch back up with the absolute top programs. They aren't far away. And hopefully that means the Houston programs push harder too. Their goal should be to finish ahead of TWHS consistently. There is no reason Houston can't have the programs to match DFW and Austin.

They have color guard, percussion, and a general audio commentary judge. Those are additional items and not incorporated into the placements. The music (individual and ensemble), visual (individual and ensemble), and GE (2 music/1 visual) judges sheets are the BOA sheets and those are the only scores that count for placements. Forgot to comment on the attendees - it really depends. I've seen it with 20+. 2 years ago it was 14 I believe, and we invited all 14 to perform in finals. Last year was 18 or 19. We'll see about scheduling vs region contests for 6A in the Houston area.

Your question is an interesting one - another contest is the one The Woodlands hosts (Lone Star Preview), which is BOA style rules to the core (including BOA judging sheets). As the ripples of this change expand, I'll probably reach out to a couple people to see if there is going to be a change to account for a 12 band finals per the updated BOA rules.

And the current news from the Hornrank forum is that regionals will have 12 finalists, up from 10 (to be publicly announced tomorrow, 2/27). Supers and Grand Nationals will continue to have 14 and 12 respectively.

From the Hornrank forums, it appears that Jenks, OK is confirmed for 2020 at SA.

So I made a little table of results from 2010 to 2019 for some top bands over the whole decade. I hope it posts OK.... Band SA Finals SA Top Half SA Wins GN Finals GN Top Half GN Wins UIL Finals UIL Top Half UIL Wins Marcus 10 8 2 2 2 0 5 4 3 The Woodlands 10 7 1 5 3 1 5 0 0 CTJ 10 9 2 3 1 0 3 1 0 Ronald Reagan 10 7 1 2 0 0 4 3 0 Hebron 9 8 0 2 2 0 5 4 0 Flower Mound 8 4 3 2 2 0 3 2 1 Vandegrift 7 5 0 1 1 1 5 (2-4A, 1-5A, 2-6A) 4 (1-4A, 1-5A, 2-6A) 1 (4A) Leander 6 4 0 2 2 0 3(1-5A, 2-6A) 2 (5A, 6A) 0 LD Bell 7 3 1 2 1 0 3 2 0 Cedar Park 8 4 0 2 1 0 5(2-4A, 3-5A) 5(2-4A, 3-5A) 4 (1-4A, 3-5A)

Well, if it comes to a choice, England and Ireland would be the right one. It has been a while since I've visited either place, but I feel like I drove over massive chunks of Ireland - Dublin, Wexford, Cork, Blarney (kissed the Blarney stone while I was there), Navan,Trim, Ennis, Adare, Limerick, Cashel, Giant's Causeway, Tara, Newgrange, Kells, Cliffs of Moher, The Burren, and more. I've been to London and a few places nearby (Camberley, Newbury), but spent most of my time in Scotland - honeymooned in Inverness and drove around quite a bit of the Scottish highlands.