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25 Years Ago Tonight: July 27, 1991 A Strange Night At The Stadium


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I could have posted this in the main junior corps forum, but since it was 25 years ago I thought it should be here.

The date....July 27, 1991

The place....Camp Randall Stadium, Madion, WI

It was the first Preview of Champions, where basically the previous season's top 25 world class corps competed in a prelims/finals format.

Star of Indiana won both prelims and finals (over the Cavaliers), and it was the announcement of scores at finals where the "fun" began.

Star of Indiana was not "embraced" by everyone in the stands, and the close competition amongst the Midwestern corps that summer just made it more volatile. The second place score of 89.5 was announced for the Cavaliers, and that was met with lots of booing. (That was not unusual, since crowds often booed when second place results were given.) What made this night different was when the first place score of 90.5 was announced for Star of Indiana, a stadium full of boos erupted. I had never heard such loud booing at a drum corps event. Usually I felt booing was aimed at judges rather than a corps, but that night it seemed like the crowd was actually booing Star of Indiana.

If that wasn't enough, p.a. announcer Bill Short (a Madison radio announcer at the time) then chastised the crowd like a scolding parent, with.....

"SHAME ON YOU!!!!!"

For the first time in all the years I'd been following drum corps I actually felt embarrassed for what had happened in a stadium. My wife (a native-born Hoosier) and I had gotten used to the kinds of receptions Star of Indiana had received since their first year of 1985. That jealousy/hatred for the Star organization showed itself many times, but its "roar" was deafening that night in 1991.

Star would of course go on to win that summer's world championship, and for the only time in DCI history the top three were Midwestern corps.

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