Hey, I'm a MM in the mellophone section for Surf this year. It's my rookie year of drum corps, and I can already tell, despite my lack of marching experience, that Surf is a very, very special organization. Not a single person involved in the organization is in any way, shape, or form worried about the progress we're making this season thus far. We all love how it's shaping up to be and are all so thrilled to see what the rest of the season holds not just for us, but for the rest of the drum corps community. I saw someone said on the first page that maybe we and the staff are getting a little tense due to our performance level, but that's not true at all! It's a very chill environment, actually, and we're all just having fun with the music. We aren't coming into this season with a crazy goal of how many corps we can beat out, though we are hoping to make it past Thursday night this year :) And there's no doubt we'd be a little bit 'better off' if we started earlier. Our season starts a bit later than other corps because many of our members are still in high school and late graduation, finals, etc can get in the way of spring training and potentially prevent some of us from being able to march with the corps. We'd much rather start a little bit later than risk taking the experience away from some of our members.
After talking to some parents of returning MMs, I've learned that one of Surf's biggest issues is the fact that a lot of members only stay for a year or two before going off to another higher ranked corps. However, we do have those members every year that age out with us having spent their entire marching career with Surf.
I can promise you, you have no reason to worry about us, if you are at all!! We're not worried even a little bit, and our show is going to be great and we love it, so hopefully you will all love it, too. :)