Majic

In addition to top notch colorguard skills, your posts also indicate that you have an astute mastery of tact and respect.

I remember getting to see you perform at Tournament of Champions two years ago, and being really impressed with the band for such a small size. I can only assume you've gotten better since; best of luck in the years to come

Either way, Summit still had a pretty solid showing. Be proud to accomplish what you did; making finals, nonetheless 6th place, is a title that could've easily gone to half a dozen other bands. Besides, other bands have been hit in the past with far greater judging descrepencies. UIL in particular isn't reputed for the most consistent scoring in the world. As easily as you can believe the judges who ranked you 4th were correct, the oppisite side can come argue the same thing for those 9th and 10th place spots. I'm not saying this to belittle your performance (truth be told, I liked it a lot), but there's always going to be some element of dissapointment to cope with.

I was wondering the same thing about Birdville- I remembered seeing their name pretty up there on the state results last year, and expected a similar ranking here. Maybe just a bad performance or something?

No worries man, no offense taken. I just have the tendancy to answer questions with overly elaborate and thorough responses. Guess I probably should've rephrased my response to sound less clinical. Tis' the pitfall of text.

Between the exhibition performance and prelims announcements there's really nothing else the band can do. There's not enough time (nor much of a reason) to file into the visitor stands, and it would be sort of rude to go off and shuffle into the locker rooms to change. That pretty much leaves either sitting down or standing at a rest position- personally, I prefer the sharper of the two. Minus the whole 5 o'clock glare beating down in everyone's eyes, of course.

I would consider Richland and Marcus in favor of placing in high finals. And if you're going to include Hebron as a potential finalist, would it not also be appropriate to consider Judson, Colleyville Heritage, Coppell, and Newman Smith? I'm sure all are working just as hard as Hebron after Arlington, and all have just as much to clean.

The only experience I've seen with song "battles" per say, is the other band playing back "Hey Baby," or the occasional trombone section that's also pinned down a rendition of low rider. But hey, they don't have a crazy **** sousaphone joining in, adding sparatic improv for comedic relief, so it's all good. Funny sousaphone story, though: I was at a football game for another school in town, and they were playing Spruce high school. Now, Spruce was a good ol' inner city Dallas school, but the 30 person band was pretty damned entertaining. Not by quality, exactly, but by production value. When the band uniform consists of XXXL t shirts, and the stands repetoire equates to hip hop drum beats couple with a pair of ridiculously loud, blasting sousaphones, it's hard not to nod along. Sort of reminded me of that god awful Drumline movie.

Tripped on a (roughly) 6/5 backleft move during rehearsal one time. My first move of the show, and we'd skipped a full stretching/fundamentals session before rehearsal. I simply rolled over my shoulder, got back up, and kept going. Thank the lord I kept my parallel to the ground; it's a brand new marching baritone, and I don't think the directors would've have liked for me to total it. Had an annoying bruise on my right arse cheek for a couple days, though. Performancewise, nothing serious. Came a bit close to falling during BOA Arlington last year at a turnaround, but I'm sure others had the same problem. Rain + marching band = less than desirable conditions. Random story that doesn't involve me: during the same rehearsal, I belive, a trombone fell during a backwards snake move. Caused a three or four person pileup, and the horn of the responsible party was crushed a section leader's butt. The bell of the bone now resembles a sort of brass taco. At least it was a only a pea shooter, and at that one with a tuning slide somebody salvaged to replace their own.

Call me crazy, but while Sachse and Creekview performed well, I didn't find either to be anything too draw dropping. However, if there's one band I would like to give props to, it's Timberview. Something like the 3rd or 4th band to go, only 85 performers, and yet still made it into finals. The music and drill were suprisingly well performed for a band of the size.