Vince Bruni Preview Of Champions Report
Reading Buccaneers skimmed through the Independence Day weekend with the wind in their sails, taking a second straight win over Rochester’s Empire Statesmen, at the 3rd annual Vince Bruni Preview of Champions on July 1. Bucs scored 80.525. Statesmen were about a point behind, at 79.563.
The third annual Preview of Champions is named in honor of the late Vince Bruni, who founded the Empire Statesmen in 1983 and the World Drum Corps Hall of Fame in 1976 and served as director of both until his passing in 2003.
Statesmen sponsored the contest at Wegmans Stadium at Aquinas Institute, as part of a busy holiday weekend schedule that saw them scheduled to perform four times: a parade in suburban Penfield NY the morning of July 1; the Preview of Champions the evening of July 1; a field show exhibition at a Raging Rhinos soccer game in PAETEC Park stadium on July 3; and the big annual July 4 parade in neighboring Irondequoit.
Syracuse Brigadiers, making their first field appearance of the season in the Preview of Champions finished third with 73.288. Rochester Crusaders scored 67.075 to finish fourth, with Danville, NY White Sabers fifth with a score of 58.638. Buccaneers again dominated the captions, taking top score in the visual composite, percussion, music composite, visual effect and effect total captions. Empire Statesmen had the top brass and music effect scores.
Empire Statesmen and Buccaneers will go head to head on the contest field three more times before the Drum Corps Associates (DCA) championship tournament is held at PAETEC Park Stadium in Rochester on Labor Day weekend. The Bucs and the Statesmen will compete again in Lewisburg, PA on July 22; in Endicott, NY on July 29; and in Reading, PA on August 26. Buccaneers are the defending DCA champions. Empire Statesmen finished second to the Buccaneers at last year’s DCA finals in Scranton, PA.
The Empire Statesmen, five-time DCA champions, are sponsoring the three-day DCA Labor Day weekend championship tournament this summer and again in 2007. The schedule of weekend events includes individual and ensemble contests, a mini-corps contest, an old-fashioned outdoor drum corps party in downtown Rochester, induction of seven new members into the World Drum Corps Hall of Fame, a concert by nine top U.S. and Canadian alumni corps, and prelims and finals for the competing corps in PAETEC Park Stadium. More than 40 units will participate in events over the weekend.
Nine of the 42 DCA championships from 1965 to 2005 have been held in Rochester: four from 1968 to 1971; four from 1973 to 1976 and one in 1996.
The Empire Statesmen drum and bugle corps is a self-supporting independent group that represents the city of Rochester across the United States and Canada and as far abroad as Europe, the Caribbean and South America.
For ticket information about the DCA championships, call (585) 266-2232 or visit the Empire Statesmen Web site at: www.statesmen.org
