Albster

The question for Madison should be ..Why are they "allowing" only ONE female !!! It is 2018 .Does Madison have a Rule/policy that prohibits qualified females from becoming members ? Why would they want to hype the fact that they are going to have and "feature" a female performer as if it was some kind of breakthrough event . Females have and continue to be outstanding drum corps performers in many many corps over many many years . Are the Cavaliers next ? or does Drum Corps have some "tradition" where corps can exclude females from becoming members.

As long as there are no clearly defined and universally applied performance metrics that are used at least as a baseline to apply a score to a caption , the process remains highly subjective and leaves the final scoring solely to the discretion of individual judges. what criteria a judge uses to determine a a tenth of a point difference between corps in a given caption is a mystery to me. The only reality is that judges have to develop some tool to use. Corps are not adjudicated based on their performance but rather on their performance relative to the other corps they compete with. Call it banding slotting or whatever you want but as long as they adopt the philosophy of scores being a art form not a science , corps cannot be indifferent to various judges opinion. What determines the final scores of the contest is much more a factor of a how a judge applies there highly subjective and discretionary value to a performance..I believe judges are well aware of how a corps has been scored in their caption , and you will not see any radical changes to the progression of that score. Everyone knows that in the finals the winning score will be 98 or 99 and it will be one of the current top 5 corps. The season itself is judged on a scale that gets a corp starting at 70 or so and ending at 99. After about a week you can figure out who the top 3 or 4 corps it will get the 99... So given this and the variability of judges and no judging accountability ( no performance metrics) a corp can do all the "cleaning or changing" they wont but the effort eill far exceed the return in terms of raising a score.

Spirit looked good , playing it safe , but is a crowd pleaser

SOA. On the field.... Looking and sounding good so far

Come along way......pit is alive , cg active good sound overall they will be fighting for top 12

Great weather....jersey up next. ....

says it all.......50 year follower from hyde park, seen it all , still amazed at the quality of individuals and their committment to excellence that the Crusaders have for 2010........The scores do not reflect the total picture ....Being at fenway Park in 1967 for the american legion and hearing the results that the Cavaliers beat BAC turned me off to the scoring piece , and 40 + years latter not much has changed on that end.......But Boston this year is bigger and better than anything Ive seen since 1963.....Good luck