Cainan

As this thread has veered off-topic and no longer aligns with the intended discussion, it will be closed. We encourage members to initiate separate threads to explore topics such as age limits for drum corps, ensuring a focused and productive dialogue. Thank you for your understanding.

If The Cadets had simply folded due to the cost of fuel, housing, insurance, food etc, I could live with that. Sad but hey, them's the breaks and life goes on. The fact that this was instead 100% self inflicted, it kinda pisses me off to be honest. I see lots of comments about He Who Shall Not Be Named... well, these actions pre-date him. Looking at the big picture, I can now see how he did what he did as the culture was already there. FOR THE RECORD... I am in NO WAY excusing the actions... I think he should be in prison right now. Just that this stuff was happening BEFORE him. As much as I hate to say it, the corps SHOULD have died back in 2018. We simply got a bonus five years on life support. This is sad, perplexing, anger inducing and TOTALLY unsurprising I'm afraid.

No... literally no point. Beating dead horses and all...

I dont normally promote the March or Die podcast here but this week we have been joined by Spirit of Atlanta's executive director Jason Burns who generously gave us over two hours of his time for the podcast (dont worry, we edited it down to 90 minutes). I figured this would be of interest to the masses as Jason is very candid about "how the sausage is made". Would love it if y'all gave it a watch and if you like what you see, it would be even better if you subscribed. Next week we have JW Koester from the Mandarins joining us and I have several other interesting folks coming on in the next several weeks.

I'd say times have changed but they really havent... This has been going on for literally decades... especially in the guard and percussion captions.

Perhaps you forgot when Carolina Crowns staff up and left for Boston... pretty much ALL of Crowns guard followed them. Todays performers DO in fact chose organisations based on instructional staff. You think brass players dont go to BD or Crown to learn under all star brass staffs? I am certain that Paul and Sandi Rennick have absolutely NO influence on percussionists decision to march at Vanguard. Seriously, times have changed pal.

Wow.... that sucks for the kids that tried out and got contracted at Troopers. It was no secret that guard was the Troopers weak link last season. Getting a new staff in would have put a buzz into that section and that is now gone. Imagine going to Troopers to age out, thinking one thing and then after contracts were given out finding out its something different. Hope they have a plan.

Oh I can assure you the Freelancers low brass section most certainly DID notice.

Your pattern of posting seems as if you have some glee in the demise of the activity. Plenty of other hobby pursuits out there my friend...

As crappy as it is to say (and I know this will be an unpopular opinion), at this point I'd say its a case of "buyer beware". Vanguard did not field last year due to financial difficulties. It is clear as day that those difficulties still exist but that the Vanguard management is merely moving the deck chairs on the Titanic at this point.... "Nothing to see here folks... it's all fine". If I was gonna fork over several thousand dollars to an organisation for my kid, or I was that kid forking over my own money, I would make absolutely sure that my INVESTMENT is safe. You wouldn't go and give a loan to a person or business that you know has no ability to repay their debt so why should giving many thousands of dollars to a drum corps be any different? It's not as if this information is particularly hard to find.. it's here, it's on redditt, facebook, X or MANY other places. At this point I would suggest that anybody that goes all in with SCV 24 does so at their own risk. I publicly said on my podcast that I absolutely do not believe that Santa Clara Vanguard will be taking the field in 2024 until I actually SEE the Santa Clara Vanguard ON the field! DCI needs to take leadership of this SCV situation and make the decision for them. Its clear as day they STILL dont have their act together. As of right now, that organisation has no business conducting drum corps business of ANY type. I am also keenly aware that Cadets and Southwind have folded and it will be a cold day in hell before anybody at DCI has the cojones to ACTUALLY do anything about this!

Not only is this out in public but it is literally ON the public record. While the subject matter certainly makes for uncomfortable reading, so long as the Community Guidelines are adhered to and the thread doesn't veer wildly off course, I see no reason to close this.

George Hopkins.... The gift that keeps on giving!

OK... I've given this thread 4 pages to get to the point and it has failed to do so. Come back and try again @Richard Lesher when there is actually something factual to report. I'm all for open and challenging discussion but only when there is something to actually discuss. If you are wanting to throw stuff at a wall and see what sticks, DCP is not the place for that.

Unfortunately, I was informed by the gentlemans son that he passed peacefully yesterday with his 5 kids at his side. He thanked us for not allowing his dad to die alone on the floor of the town market, but rather with his family by his side. I had very mixed emotions when I heard the news. Naturally I thought "could we have done more?" and then I realised how daft that thought was. We kept him going enough for the paramedics to intervene. The paramedics (there were 4 of them btw) showed up with all of their training, their equipment and their meds and it took THEM a half hour to stabilise him enough just to transport him to the ambulance. Once in the ambulance, he arrested twice more. They managed to get the man to the cardiac specialist hospital in Liverpool where with a wealth of cardiac doctors and untold amounts of equipment and technology even they couldn't stave off the inevitable. I suppose when it's your time it's your time. I spoke with one of the paramedics that was on scene and he said the guy was gone before he hit the floor and that in no uncertain terms, we saved his life. His family got to say a proper goodbye because of everyones intervention and I can live at peace with that. Would I do it again if the situation presented itself? Absolutely. Would I have done anything differently? No.

That is reassuring to know... The Chritian Errikson and Damar Hamlin incidents certainly taught us that being in peak physical condition doesn't mean that crazy stuff cant happen.

I am going to use some "admin priveledge" and blatantly break the rules here and post something off topic.. but I suppose in a roundabout way it isn't really. We are all talking about health and wellbeing in the activity on a constant basis... This is a very physically demanding activity that we do and cardiac arrest is not something totally outside of the realms of possibility... What would you do if someone dropped in front of you? Would you know what to do? I wont go into detail, but yesterday, fate placed my family in a situation where we found ourselves having to administer CPR to a man. He literally dropped dead right in front of us while we were out to breakfast. What had happened was patently obvious and there was no time to react. Seconds absolutely mattered and we acted. 999 (thats 911 over here) was called IMMEDIATELY by my wife, and she was a rock star relaying information to them, and to us from them... but the ambulance still took around fifteen minutes to arrive so we had no choice. My daughter was the first to administer compressions followed by me. A defib device was available but unable to administer a shock. I simply do not have words to say how proud I am of my wife and daughter as they were absolute heroes today. We just found out that now, nearly 24 hours later the man is still alive. He is very ill but he is still alive with his kids by his side. If you have not been CPR trained.. please, I absolutely beg you... go learn. If you have been trained but it's been a long time... go refresh. Don't wait.. do it now. Learn about defib devices and know where they are and how to use them. (Which does make me wonder.. do corps carry defibs on the road with them?) I last trained nearly 30 years ago and thought I would never have to use those skills.. Well, yesterday was never.

We had such an opportunity with the 2020 season cancellation to re-write the way we do things as an activity... from the way we perform to the way we protect the members AND staff, to squaring up finances and providing equity across not just World Class but Open Class as well... and yes to HOW we tour. Unfortunately, as a collective of the corps and DCI (and yes, the individual corps HAVE to shoulder a LOT of the blame here) they did absolutely sweet nothing at all. What a wasted opportunity.

I suspect you'll be waiting a good long while...

Beleive it or not, we don't go out of our way to close threads.. quite the opposite actually. You don't see just how much cleaning up of threads we do in an effort to keep them open. THe only time we actually close threads are... A... The thread has completely and utterly ran its course B... It has become so off the rails that it is completely unmanagable or C... it is a clear and blatant duplicate thread. That's it folks. Believe it or not, the admin team actually LIKES conversations and ENCOURAGES challenging discourse

There's already a 2024 Vanguard thread. Closing this one to make all the admins lives a bit easier. Feel free to post over there.

My gut tells me this thread may go nuclear in a record short amount of time. Better go limber up...

Right... This thread has devolved into personal attacks and bickering (as virtually every other SCV thread has on here in the last year). As and when there is any new information that is noteworthy regarding Vanguard, be that source from Santa Clara themselves or from DCI, I have no doubt a new thread will be started and the topic discussed to within an inch of its life. Thread closed.

You win the internet today.

The silence from DCI is deafening. I can see Vanguard being "Pioneered" before they get a chance to do it themselves. The top five reasons that non profits fail are... Lack of a Plan Unrealistic Expectations Lack of Leadership No Money Failure to adapt I think they pretty much tick all those boxes.

Good run... Problem is Phantom and Mandarins had GREAT runs... I honestly rank it Mandarins, Phantom and then Cadets