Last Saturday, Wölper Löwen Drum & Bugle Corps from Neustadt won the first Drum Corps Germany contest of the 2006 season in Witzenhausen. The corps scored 38,25 points, two points ahead of the Starriders from Bad Münder.

Wölper Löwen took also the Music Effect, Visual Effect, Ensemble Music and Brass Performance captions. The Starriders came in second with 38.25 points, followed by Fidele Vogelsanger from Gevelsberg with 35.03 points (winning the Percussion caption). Newcomer Flying Drums from Hannover came in 4th place (30.20), and the Blue Diamonds reached 5th place (28.05). This corps from Nienhagen entered the competition field again after six years. The Blue Diamonds managed to score 3rd in guard. (Source: Klaus J. Kühne)

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The European drum corps season will start today with an indoor contest in Witzenhausen - Germany. The contest is run by Drum Corps Germany and includes the German Individuals & Ensembles competition.

The DCG indoor contest will feature the corps Black Panthers, Blue Bandits, Blue Diamonds, Fidele Vogelsanger, Flying Drums, Red Stars, Starriders, The Devils, and Wölper Löwen. Since the contest is held in a sports hall, the corps will do a concert performance, with the Effect, Music, Brass, Percussion and Color Guard captions being judged.

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(Translated via AltaVista Babel Fish)

The jury manual of the group Music In Motion (AK MIB) so far contains no defined evaluation boxes for Percussion performance. In order to make the interpretation of the scores simpler, the Percussion jury will fall back this season to the box system from the Drum Corps Europe jury manual. The boxing system indicated there will apply until a German version is added to the jury manual of the AK MIB. This measure does not concern a change of the valuation criteria. Rather, we want to better define, on the basis assigned scores, recognized strengths and weaknesses.

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Saturday night, the equipment truck of the Black Knights Drum & Bugle Corps from Gravesend was stolen. The truck had the entire battery and some brass instruments on board. On Sunday, the truck was recovered and still driveable.

"No sooner had word got out than I had several phone calls all offering support and instruments", senior corps coordinator Emma Weir of the Black Knights said. "We would just like to say thanks to everybody for that, but especially Ian and Sue Lyall and Southern Aurora, Joe Fitzpatrick and the Senators, Phil Clegg and 6th Hove, Kev Gannaway Pitt and 37th Kingswood, Keith Morris and Phoenix Coventry, all at Kidsgrove, Northern Star and Forgeman and Gavin Johnson DCUK Chairman and Steve Muzio DCUK Trustee, who all responded amazingly so by lunchtime yesterday we had borrowed or replaced all the instruments we lost."

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