BOAfanatic

Wow. Definitely the most unforgettable BOA San Antonio EVER! But, in order to truly assess what on Earth just happened, and to figure out the real state of our marching bands, we must ask ourselves one pivotal question (and I'm not sure I know the answer yet): is this the most inaccurate group of judges we've ever had, or is it the most honest and unbiased one?

I cannot even begin to describe how excited I am for this contest. I mean, this is in every way a grand nationals of the south! I don't know how I could possibly pick 14 bands and say "that's who I think will make finals." There's just no way! The level of talent across the entire state of Texas has been uniformly raised exponentially. It's as if somebody took the master volume panel (replaced with a "master talent" panel) and just kicked it up 5 notches! IT'S INSANE! I have a feeling this is going to be, top to bottom, one of greatest overall contests BOA has seen in years, if not its entire history. I mean, just making finals is going to be such a dogfight that every single finalist band could probably make grand national finals. Just think about those last 4 spots. SO many bands could take them. I wouldn't be surprised if there's a band that has made finals at San Antonio every year for a decade that suddenly misses this year (we already saw a similar situation last year with Winston Churchill). This is just going to be nuts. I have to buy this DVD!

Very true. Is it a bit strange that Bowie got ninth overall in music, behind many bands we may not have expected? I think it is to an extent. But is it strange how even after getting ninth in music, Bowie still won the whole contest? Definitely not. At the end of the day, they were without a doubt the favorite coming into this contest. I really wish we could have seen how things played out in a finals contest, but I suppose we'll just have to wait until Conroe. Now, if someone can manage to steal a caption from The Woodlands, I'll be genuinely impressed.

I don't know...other than Aledo high school (the band that got suddenly poured on in the middle of their show), was it really ever raining during anyone else's performance? Other than maybe the wet field affecting visuals (which still seems to me like a negligible effect at best), I can't imagine how rain would have had anything to do with the oddities in the scores. Especially considering there was no finals contest, it could very well be that Bowie and Cedar Park just had exceptionally weak performances (as compared to their usual) while CTJ and Vandegrift had exceptionally strong performances.

My fearless prediction: Grand Nationals is about to become the Texas regional of Indiana.

Reagan did a great job today! Definitely top 11 and semi-finals qualifier!

I am here in Indianapolis right now. I will be watching Reagan today and Bowie tomorrow. I'll let you guys know how both do!

Wow, what a great judging panel! As for some of the out of state judges, I can personally vouch for Mr. James Keene. Although I am now an alum, graduating high school earlier this year, I can still remember clearly all the great times I had when Mr. Keene would come to clinic our band, especially before we went to the national concert band festival. Mr. Keene is a highly intelligent man, and I 100% respect and trust his expertise in music (I'm just guessing he will be a music judge, but whatever the case, you can trust this man's word).

Look, I know it must feel pretty horrible not making finals at area in the midst of such a good year for your school. I was thinking to myself "Looks like they waited to announce Round Rock until last". And then they called another band, and I too was in shock. Whatever you do, don't let yourself get too down in the dumps considering you have another great shot this Friday to make some noise. All you should worry about is going out there on Friday or Saturday and showing the world why you guys are awesome. For whatever it's worth, I thought you guys did amazing. Good luck.

Let me just say this: I saw them perform last Friday the night before area contest without any of the trees. Let's just say it was revealing.

No kidding. It's pretty weird though how inconsistent the visual judging was not just in prelims but in finals. Music judging was for the most part pretty consistent and pretty accurate. However, there were only 2 bands in finals that the visual judges agreed on, the best and the worst. And everywhere in between was quite frankly chaos. 2nd and 7th, 3rd and 9th, 9th and 5th, all over the place. This sort of shuffling of the deck may have allowed the higher placement of some bands. When we look at the music scores, it was 1. Bowie (3), 2. Reagan (8), 3. Johnson (10) and 4. Westlake (12). Looking at this, if one visual judge would have placed a certain band one place differently and Reagan and Johnson were to tie, Reagan would have won that music based tie-breaker. I was there at the area D contest and personally watched all of the finals bands. Bowie far and away deserved first, but I have to say if I was a judge I would have put Reagan second. Their finals performance was head and shoulders above their prelims performance, very polished, powerful, and effective. Johnson didn't give me the cleanliness in marching or the power in brass sound that I would have expected from them. All and all, it was very close, and it should be interesting to see what happens at state. I think we could see multiple bands from area D make state finals.

I think that so long as the band members don't let the fact that they are going first affect them negatively, there really is not much of a disadvantage to going first. I've performed first at a UIL 5A area marching contest before and placed second out of all of the bands the entire day.

I honestly think that trying to make predictions for this area at all is going out on a limb. I can already tell this has the makings to be one of the best area contests in years. Sure, Bowie getting first is pretty likely, but I really don't think that anything is certain at this point. UIL scoring system, different panels from prelims to finals, not to mention so many bands doing alot better than they have been. Musically this must be a nightmare for the judges! You've got Bowie who probably sounds nails as usual, CTJ with their CTJ brass, Round Rock who keeps giving me goosebumps left and right, Cedar Ridge who came out running from literally nowhere, Ronald Reagan who actually outscored The Woodlands in music ensemble at Conroe...this will probably be more exciting than many state contests have been! Nobody is completely safe at this one and there are great bands who could give anyone a run for their money at state that won't make it out of this area contest.

Oh...my...God...dat face melting brass!

Indeed, this is going to be an interesting year. I too believe that we are seeing the rise and fall of dynasties. Even then, though, this is the hardest time I've ever had trying to pick a winner for SA. And quite frankly, it's because there is none. Under certain circumstances, there are a lot of bands that could win SA, or at the very least rewrite some long held beliefs. Marcus and Bell have been in power for too long, but I don't know if we will see someone new decisively grab power this year or see a couple years of, well, anarchy. Results for the next couple of years could be all over the place until a new power takes control for good. I would expect anything to happen next Saturday.