Statesmen Take Top Spot In Syracuse
Rochester’s Empire Statesmen were tops in both music and visual effect in the Pageant of Drums in Syracuse, NY on Saturday, August 5, helping to produce a comfortable margin over second-place Hawthorne Caballeros. In scoring 89.188, Statesmen also had top color guard, high ensemble visual, top field percussion and top field brass scores. Cabs, with 87.763, were tops in field visual, ensemble percussion, ensemble brass and music composite.
Syracuse Brigadiers, performing in front of a home-town audience at Alliance Bank Stadium finished in third place, with 82.950. Racine Kilties, making a rare eastern appearance, were fourth, with 73.475. Rochester Crusaders finished fifth with 72.675. White Sabers of Danville, NY, who continue show weekly improvement, were sixth, with 67.663.
Most of the top corps in the northeast will meet on the field at Dietz Stadium in Kingston, NY on Saturday, August 12 in the March of Champions. The contest will feature Empire Statesmen, Harrison NJ Bushwackers, Caballeros, Brigadiers, New York Skyliners, Connecticut Hurricanes and the White Sabers.
Empire Statesmen and Bushwackers have each won two contests this year. The front-running Reading PA Buccaneers, winners of six straight contests this season, did not compete on the past weekend.
Statesmen and Buccaneers will meet again August 26 in Reading, PA, just a week before the Drum Corps Associates (DCA) championship tournament is held at PAETEC Park Stadium in Rochester on Labor Day weekend. Buccaneers won the initial DCA championship title in 1965 in Milford, Connecticut, and are the defending 2005 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. Weekend events include 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, the new home of the Rochester Rhinos professional soccer team.
Nine of the 42 DCA championships from 1965 to 2005 were 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 and other events on Labor Day weekend, call (585) 266-2232 or visit the Empire Statesmen Web site at: www.statesmen.org
