Majellan

I would put Wylie at #1 in thier region. They smoked Mckinney Boyd in Duncanville last year, Mckinney HS is a little behind Boyd but similar, both are upcoming bands but Wylie is already there. I don't get the Allen advancing either, basically just a bunch of kids on the field, I love the fact that they have 800 kids interested in band but it doesn't exactly make for precision marching. Btw, that's just from impartial observation, I live in Frisco Centennial's district, too bad they are not in 6a in that region btw, because Centennial would most likely be 2nd. Now getting out of area, I would put Wylie at 4th. The Lewisville ISD schools will continue to take the top three spots, can't wait to see Hebron's drill this year.

Agreed, they did perform well at the Midland Finals. CTJ ran away in the Midland contest, but Clovis was about 5 points behind Bellevue West so they could have a shot. I would love to see it happen, great to see a school in the middle of nowhere get to a super regional final. The problem is, this is going to be a stronger St. Louis final this year, not only the Tulsa area and Texas bands, but the aforementioned Bellevue West, Lafayette, LA., Bentonville Ark., Blue Springs, OFallon township. It would be a well earned finals placement, we'll see:)

There is a field on the north side of the star at frisco for warm ups, not just the football field in front of the stadium, not sure if that is a Cowboys only field or not. Since the stadium is surrounded by development it isn't a great setup for marching band. However, Frisco ISD does an all Frisco ISD marching exhibition for all 10 high schools there and that seems to go fairly well. Haven't heard any of the better bands such as Frisco Lone Star, Centennial or Wakeland complain about it, but I'm not exactly in the know except for Centennial. All 10 of the bands have between 200-300 kids with full pits so they're organizing it somehow.

Thank You for stating this, I was just writing about some peeps saying the top was the same every year. Maybe short term, but the top 10 Texas bands has been a constant merry go round for the last 30 years. Sure you had the LD Bells, the Marcus Bands, Leander, The Woodlands, Westfield and Spring rule the roost in their particular time periods, however, that is not because of rep in my opinion. If rep wins BOA super regionals then Hebron wins this last year, certainly not CTJ. I've liked CTJ since they came on the scene but they haven't been the judges or directors choice because of their out of the box style. Now I love Hebron, being from NTX, but I don't think anyone would say CTJ wasn't the best at BOA. However, there have been other times where I thought one band was the clear winner and the judges thought differently. Rep does matter, but it doesn't keep a band that executed well from overcoming rep to win at least in BOA. I don't see CTJ winning the state UIL contest without being much more conservative, but UIL and BOA are two totally different philosophies.

I agree Gogogo, I thought I was missing something in searching for US Bands national finalist last year on youtube. I'm always glad to see bands perform no matter the talent level and certainly it's great for lower level bands to get the spotlight, but last years US Bands national champion would not make most of the boa regional finals...certainly not one of the Texas boa regionals. Lafayette should've gone to New Jersey and grabbed a US Bands national championship last year rather than coming to Dallas.

Absolutely, that would be a great competition. I actually thought we were sending the top bands this year, Flower Mound was outstanding but they never quite got in sync with their show. I acknowledge that Marcus is outstanding, but I have not seen many shows by them that I love, could be the incredible amount of props. And yes to the person that said 4th in Texas was high for Marcus last year, that's probably true this year. Ronald Reagan could've slipped in front of them this year, The Woodlands sanse hurricane, so maybe 6th best in the state....we'll see next year at UIL:)

That's true, but we've got plenty of great 5A bands including the several of the Frisco schools. I agree I don't see the 6A bands double dipping and stressing out to try and get to a US Bands competition. But if history is indicative of the attendees, Frisco bands, Wakeland, Centennial, Lone Star and perhaps a Richland addition would have a great chance to win even over Lafayette if they return. Now I doubt this would happen, but if Vandegrift or Leander decided to make the trip north that would really make it interesting.

Well, I was referring to a hypothetical national finals competition in San Antonio. Marcus was, at best, the fourth best band in Texas this year and they, as you state, ranked number four at nationals. Had Hebron and CTJ or even Vandegrift gone to Indy this year all bets are off the table on who would've won. Marcus was 1.8 percentage points behind Carmel at Nationals, and 2.1 points behind CTJ at San Antonio. Now Marcus did perform better at Nationals but by how much. CTJ, Hebron and Carmel would've been neck and neck, after seeing Carmel's show I can't see them beating either Hebron or CTJ unless either one had a bad performance....which is always possible. Keep in mind that Hebron won the Dallas regional at Southlake as well, so they consistently rated better than the other two Lewisville ISD schools the entire marching season, Hebron even beat Marcus at the Duncanville Marching invitational immediately prior to San Antonio. Btw, I wouldn't call having 3 of the top 6 bands at nationals not being toe to toe with the top bands. Especially considering the Woodlands didn't even get on the field until mid September because of Harvey. Edit: Oh, I just realized you were from Carmel 18 Saxes. This is no bashing of Carmel, I would love to see Carmel come to San Antonio as a matter of fact because you guys have such a great history and have won at San Antonio once(albeit by .25 points over LD Bell the year before Spring Westfield won nationals in 2003). As a Texan, I naturally like to go on about my state. That caveat aside, I still stand by my prognosis. Texas is a tough place to compete in marching band, most years our bands have to hurry up to indy at the last minute after having gone to our state competition. Prosper did that this past fall, drove straight from the state contest to Indianapolis, 800 miles. There is no doubt an edge for the local bands.

I have to say, I hope at least a couple of the premier bands in DFW go. Don't want Lafayette to come up here feel like they cleaned up like last year. Southlake was the only regular boa attendee of note last year, they are a good band but haven't yet cracked the top tier by any stretch. Frisco Centennial, Arlington Martin or Wylie would be enough to represent well and probably take home a championship at Cowboys stadium, I'm pretty sure LD Bell, Hebron and the Flower Mound schools don't have any interest in that contest. I would think the Frisco schools, Prosper and maybe Hebron may be interested in the Frisco Western Regional with it being inside the Ford Center. I've seen the Frisco ISD bands perform there and I was curious as to why BOA hasn't yet considered that venue. It had pretty good acoustics for the big four Frisco bands of Wakeland, Lone Star, Centennial and Liberty. US bands is interesting in that they have a lot of coverage in the northeast, wonder what kind of surprise bands that I haven't heard of before may be up there. BOA only has no competitions in New England. The contests in Ohio, North Carolina or the lightly attended Delaware contests are the closest BOA regionals in that area.

I don't agree with the statement that Texas bands are weaker at the top than Grand Nationals. While Avon and Carmel are undoubtedly great marching bands, they have an inherit advantage in that they live 15 minutes away from the stadium in Indy and are there every year. That helps tremendously with nerves, fan support, exhaustion level, just can't be overstated. If the nationals were held in San Antonio every year, who would have the most national titles? Westfield or Spring (80'S-2000's), LD Bell, Marcus? We know Broken Arrow would be in there still as well as Tarpon Springs, Avon, and Carmel at times, but would they win and would they be in the top five every year?....I don't think so. The top 10 would be a lot thicker. I'm going to go ahead and say it,CTJ or Hebron would've have won it last year if the finals in San Antonio scenario were true. Lets remember that Avon came in fourth in Texas, perhaps because of travel but Round Rock came in 18th at San Antonio, 12th at GN finals. Even with the travel and inconsistent attendance, Texas has 4 grand nationals under it's belt and a lot of close top 3 finishes. I think any of the top 10 finalists and possibly top 20 finalists at San Antonio would make finals at Grand Nats any year. I live in Frisco and Centennial doesn't go to BOA so I don't have a dog in this fight except watching Texas bands for the past 35 years since I was old enough to hold an instrument. All that being said I would say there are 6 or 7 Texas bands every year that could go toe to toe with the GN winner, so San Antonio is just as heavy at the top as Grand Nats.

Really odd how DFW regional is TBD every year. I'm certainly glad it is not in Arlington anymore, just odd that they can't get something lined up. Plenty of good venues to choose from.

Okay, I agree that UIL is good as it is in being fair to the military bands. However, having marched in military and Corps style bands, Corps style marching is much harder to perform. Kind of like comparing apples to oranges, many military bands go for years with alterations to the same show. However, I think they deserve a spot in the competition, I don't think the rules need to be changed, certainly not to include show bands....how would you judge that against military or corps? I can't think of a military band that would deserve to be in the top 10 in 6A. The usually dependable Longview band did not perform well this year, Lufkin was better but the drill was blah, neither band has the imagination that some of Spring Hill's military shows have. I haven't seen Kingwood's performances so can't comment on them. But comparing a Hebron, Vandegrift or certainly CTJ bands to the top 6A military bands would be very difficult indeed.

Union, Broken Arrow, Jenks and Owasso used to come to boa Dallas, it was during ld bell’s reign. They never won and eventually stopped coming, I don’t know why but I could guess. I think that is more likely what you would see at San Antonio without the event being tagged a grand national.

There will also be the continued effect of more Texas bands expanding out to Atlanta and St Louis regionals in order to medal. Like LD Bell last year and Haltom City, Cedar Ridge and Westwood. Amazing those are called super regionals along with San Antonio because clearly SA is in a different league.

I grew up in Houston area, I fondly remember the reign of Spring and Westfield. Houston kind of taken it on the head from DFW and central Texas other than North Shore and The Woodlands. Cry Fair and Pearland both received top 20 spots at boa SA so hopefully southeast Texas is on the way back up:). Hurricane Harvey admittedly set the area back this year, I hope Houston area gets back in the groove

I grew up in Houston area, I fondly remember the reign of Spring and Westfield. Houston kind of taken it on the head from DFW and central Texas other than North Shore and The Woodlands. Cry Fair and Pearland both received top 20 spots at boa SA so hopefully southeast Texas is on the way back up:). Hurricane Harvey admittedly set the area back this year, I hope Houston area gets back in the groove

Seriously, I live in Frisco. Never heard of Rouse before seeing them at state:). I thought Frisco Centennial was a sinch to get a high rating at state before year started because most of the Leander bands moved up. That fell through as Centennial didn’t get past area. But wow, Leander isd just keeps pumping out the marching bands! Frisco now has four bona fife competition bands but we can’t hang with Leander. Lewisville is the only one I can think that can match y’all in high performing bands.

All things being equal, which they aren’t but fun to speculate anyway. Tarpon Springs won Atlanta with a 92.25, good for 9th place in San Antonio....amazing. That makes relative sense considering

All things being equal, which they aren’t but fun to speculate anyway. Tarpon Springs won Atlanta with a 92.25, good for 9th place in San Antonio....amazing.

They do hand out 1's like candy. I have been in a band that got 2's and 3's and we had 7th graders marching in our varsity band, it was a small school. However, being in that environment then compared to living in Frisco Centennial's attendance zone right now, even the band's that got 1's in my high school's region were not near the level of the band's receiving 1's in Central Texas or North Texas. Looking at that list, it's frankly amazing that 1's went to a lot of these schools considering the show that some of these bands were performing. But bands pride themselves on saying they receive 1's for 20 years, and that's not a bad thing I suppose. Once percentage ratings start getting used in area and state or BOA you see the separation pretty quickly. Not intentionally trying to be ugly, but most of the bands in East Texas that are 5A and 6A do not merit 1's. Actually some of the region's military bands come closest such as Longview, Lufkin or Pine Tree. The better non military bands in East Texas tend to be 4A and lower, for example Mineola, Canton, or Queen City.

Keller Central was outstanding musically tonight but they had some issues on the marching side. I think they should have been placed where they were with the exception that Berkner should've fell behind them. Wylie also brought it tonight so they deserved to be ahead of Central, I didn't see that happening until Wylie played. I still loved Keller Central's show, just seemed like they had some focus issues. Like I said earlier, Berkner should've fell further than they did tonight, had some real tempo issues at times. Berkner sounded like they had some serious issues toward the end of their show.

I was dismissing Prosper since they haven't been real successful prior to last year. However, when I noticed who their band director is now I see why they won the HEB contest this year. Centennial's show was clean and well executed at ToC but to me the show was kind of meh, I'm hoping the last song that they add will add some spice to an otherwise stale routine. The weakness of Centennial's show could provide a door for Prosper, Wakeland wasn't impressive this year to me, but they always seem to come on late in the year so maybe they'll improve.

Frisco Centennial, Berkner and Martin will run away with this one.

How is Frisco Centennial not mentioned here? They don't go to boa contests, but they beat Wakeland, Liberty and Martin at Plano East Marching Invitational last year. They were 9th in state in 2015 right behind Wakeland, they'll be higher this year with most of the Leander ISD schools moving up to 6A. Granted they are a step below the Lewisville ISD schools and LD Bell but beyond that they're right in the hunt. 1:Hebron 2:Flower Mound 3:Marcus 4:LD Bell 5:Keller 6:Keller Central 7:Waxahachie 8:Berkner 9:Frisco Centennial 10:Wakeland Honorable Mention: Coppell, Keller Timber Creek, Plano East, Duncanville, Arlington Martin, Haltom, Richland