Beau R

My name is Beau Rowell and I'm a Board member of Friends of Spirit, Inc., which operates the Spirit of Atlanta Drum & Bugle Corps. With respect to housing for Cadets for the Hoschton, GA show, both Spirit and Cadets were caught off guard about the loss of Woodland HS as a housing site for the Cadets, only learning about it last night during the Valdosta, GA show. We are very thankful to the staff at Cairo High School, who made their facilities available at the last minute for Cadets. Further, we understand Cadet's decision to not attend the Hoschton show at Mill Creek HS due to the distances between Cairo HS and Mill Creek HS. Here are the facts surrounding Woodland HS as a housing site for Cadets for the Hoschton show: the Friends of Spirit team dealt with a particular individual at Woodland, who had confirmed to us in writing in May that Woodland could house Cadets on July 10/11 during the Valdosta show last night is when it became known that Woodland HS wasn't available as a housing site for Cadets Friends of Spirit has learned in the last couple hours that the individual we were dealing with on housing suddenly no longer works for Woodland and, prior to his departure from Woodland, apparently didn't follow proper procedures to officially request that the school be used as a housing site for July 10/11, despite telling us otherwise as a result the Woodland school administration was not aware of the Cadets' arrival for July 10/11 we do not know at this time if other events are occurring at Woodland today, but it's likely that football practice or other activities could have been a conflict Woodland did try to make it work but were not able to make arrangements at the last minute Securing housing sites is a big challenge for all DCI drum corps. Please know that the principal at Woodland High School is NOT the person to be blamed this situation. As you now know, the principal did not "back out" and in fact did all they could to try to make it work. From Woodland's perspective, they learned that Cadets would be arriving with only about six hours notice. Hopefully you now understand this situation. We respectfully ask that you not bombard Principal Ellis and blame her for Woodland not being available for Cadets. Sending her derogatory letters will not help this situation, and in fact could be problematic long term for Spirit, which held spring training at Woodland. We've worked diligently at developing positive relationships with school districts in the greater Atlanta area. Let's please not undermine the foundations built by blaming the wrong person for this situation. Thank you.

Make that FIVE DCP members at the Erie show who didn't meet each other...

In the years I marched in Spirit of Atlanta, everyone in the percussion section (both battery and front ensemble) read music.

Jack is correct, although I thought it was done in 84 and 85 with the third stick. I was unaware of 1983, but Jack marched that year so I'll have to take his word for it. My recollection is that the third stick was yellow, not blue.

Nikk: So I hear from Jim Black that you should be able to answer your own question now. Enjoy your time in Athens. Go Dawgs!

Teal's music is from a Finnish group called Rajaton (pronounced RA ya ton) http://www.rajaton.org/main.site?set_language=eng

dci.org now has a scores page up for Open SemiFinals...but the postings are behind the score announcements inside the stadium at this point....

Doce, kaksi kymmenen, XII.....12!

It's all the little piece of black rubber that make up a good portion of the cushioning coming up to the surface. Get's all inside your shoes!

Congrats to 7th Regiment on their season. I have two students in the drum line, Christian T on snare and Matt C on #2 bass. Great job guys, very proud of you!

My favorite Spirit memory: playing all those after show concerts in 1986, winning the DCI Canada regional and the Drum Corps East title.

Believe those were made by North Drums. I never played them, but the guys I know who did said that it was very difficult to hear yourself play and therefore to play clean together. Spirit as far as I know didn't use them in a show, only pre-season. But I could be wrong.

Let's just say that we as a corps weren't very happy with the prelims and finals scores in 1987. Losing to corps we'd been beating handily all year was a bit too much to take. Politics? Likely. But I forgot, there's no such thing as politics in drum corps. Yeah.

Spirit was close to Cadets all year until the end. In fact, if you go back and compare scores for Spirit vs. the rest of the final Top 12, Spirit was sitting in 6th place until last two or three shows. As a Spirit 87 member, I can tell you this: we didn't like "falling" from 6th to 10th in the last week of the season. Look as the spreads between Spirit and Cadets, Blue Devils SCV, Cavaliers and Phantom from Aug 1-11, then look at what happened to the spreads at Semi Finals and Finals. We certainly didn't get 4 or 5 points worse in the last week of the season while everyone else went up.

Yes, it was 1987 at Decatur High School in Atlanta. As it was our home show, after the show was canceled, we (Spirit) went ahead and performed our show in exhibition. I believe we did it in uniform but without shakos, but we may have done it without the uniform jacket. That detail's a bit fuzzy now.