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SCV 1989 over age members


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I just dug up the original report on this incident.

DCI determined that SCV was not held accountable or receive any penalties. Here is a quote:

"The difference between this incident and the same occurance in the 1970s with three corps is that SCV was not intending to cheat; the director had no knowledge of the violation. The United States and British authorities have been notified that these individuals falsified government documents and the appropriate action is being taken. They have allegedly committed an international felony."

So according to this, I guess we may assume that DCI did believe that the 1970s corps all knew of their over-age personnel, and did cheat in allowing those people to march.

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I just dug up the original report on this incident.

DCI determined that SCV was not held accountable or receive any penalties. Here is a quote:

"The difference between this incident and the same occurance in the 1970s with three corps is that SCV was not intending to cheat; the director had no knowledge of the violation. The United States and British authorities have been notified that these individuals falsified government documents and the appropriate action is being taken. They have allegedly committed an international felony."

So according to this, I guess we may assume that DCI did believe that the 1970s corps all knew of their over-age personnel, and did cheat in allowing those people to march.

Thanks for the info. Of course, we are assuming the corps management in the 70's knew of their overage members. I wonder if the incidents the occurred during the seventies involved members presenting false documents? Either the members did not present documents, presented accurate documents, or presented false documents. In the first two, the management would surely have been guilty. In the latter, I'm not so sure. It is possible that falsified documents were presented and the management knew they were false.

Edited by DAvery
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So did Phantom receive an honorary gold?

SCV had nothing to do with the over aged guys but, It was a rules infraction and, Phantom did come in second.

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SCV had two members who were kicked out at the end of the season. Both were overage guys from the UK who had aged out with the Dagenham Crusaders and came to SCV with false birth certificates and false passports.

Here's a scan of the Drum Corps World article dated August 31, 1989 which is titled "SCV not penalized for overage members".

scv-not-penalized-1.jpg

This article verifies that they did indeed have falsified passports and had allegedly committed an international felony by entering the U.S. with false documents. I suppose today they'd be in a lot more trouble. It also explains why SCV was not penalized by DCI.

There are some things that have happened in my life that I remember in great detail. The experience of being in SCV is definitely one of them.

One of the overage guys was a snare player who I'm certain was kicked out when we were at our housing sight for the Centerville, Ohio show. The above article says GR was notified on August 8 about the first guy (the snare). Since we were presumably already at our housing site for the "Dayton" show, I'm sure my memory is correct about where we were when we found out. The website corpsreps.com identifies that as Dayton, but I’m pretty sure it was Centerville, Ohio for the housing. The actual show there was on August 10 – eight days before Nats.

I remember the Cadets of Bergen County were staying at the same school as us that day. When we walked out of the gym to head to our practice field, the Cadets’ pit section was just outside the gym playing the “Bring Him Home” intro. I remember thinking “OMG. That is going to make the most awesome ballad.” I found out later it was actually the beginning of their closer. (I was kinda excited and anticipating seeing the Cadets' Les Mis show. Many of us SCV peeps really loved the music from Les Mis. I had bought the Broadway Cast CD and loved every second of it. We had actually done “8s & 8s” in the early season to the confrontation scene between Valjean and Javier - as part of Dan Dilullo’s system of getting us to march differently and interpreting the emotion of each piece. )

The corps was in such a laser beam focussed state at this point. There was not much time to think about the missing snare. SCV’s rehearsals at the time were VERY planned, aggressively paced and had practically no “down time” - so there wasn’t much time to think about anything extraneous. And we were being pushed and pushed by the staff and ourselves to keep up the momentum we had already established. (This was a position they had been in many times before and weren’t about to let us drop the intensity during the “home stretch”.)

I do remember that the freshly booted snare’s girlfriend (who was in the colorguard) was crying right before the beginning of rehearsal when she found out – and I think that’s the exact moment that the rest of us found out. I don’t believe there was any kind of official announcement made that day. If there was, I don’t remember one. And this ripple that went around as we all figured out what was going on appeared to make the other overage guy (who was a frenchhorn) kinda defensive and nervous. After a particular reset during rehearsal, somebody had apparently said something under their breath about HIM being a suspect now and he blurted out “And you know it’s not f------- true!” – glaring at all of us. I was pretty near him when that happened, and I remember thinking “OK. He at least knew that Mark was a fraud. Because now he’s acting guilty himself.” But the rehearsals flew by at the normal SCV pace and you just did what you were trained to do. Rise above it and focus on your own job.

The snareline had time to adjust their drill and close in that hole. Just how noticeable the adjustment was during finals has been the object of much commentary on DCP. I personally feel that taking into consideration how close it was to Championships, they did a pretty good job (considering how drilled into your head set points were at that point in the season).

The visible hole in the drill was from the aforementioned frenchhorn player who was kicked out after we were already at our housing sight in Kansas City. It was too late for us to do anything about that one. Someone recently posted a video of the Quarters performance on Facebook – so that helped jog my memory that we marched that hole for all three shows – Quarters, Semis & Finals. (I’d always known it was visible in the Semis video I have.)

I said before that I’m not 100% sure how we found out about Mark, the snare or who told us about him. But I'll never forget finals week in 89 when GR called us all together outside the school to tell us about a second British guy having just been kicked out for lying about his age. It was probably the maddest I ever saw GR in the two years I was a member of SCV when he was telling us. :laughing: His face turned blood red and his face kinda quivered a little. The guy acually had tears whelling up in his eyes. But it was kinda like tears of rage (which is impossible to forget). You have to understand how much we all loved GR. In that moment, I think every one of us would have found that guy and beat him to a pulp JUST FOR GAIL. JUST FOR HURTING GAIL SO DEEPLY. Nevermind what he'd just done to us. (We'd worry about that some other time.) You could really feel how betrayed Gail felt. These guys were willing to forge documents and jeopardize an entire SCV season (and what looked like a pretty good shot at the title). But I think we understood that we still had a job to do. It was like Gail was mad enough for all of us, so we didn't need to get mixed up in it.

I was about to type "I guess I’ve blocked it out, because I can’t remember his name". But as I was replaying this whole thing in my mind over and over... the name Kevin keeps coming up. So maybe his name was Kevin.

Gail told us he had told the guy to start walking because he didn’t want to be at the school when we were informed of his betrayal. We were told that he had left all of his belongings in the gym and walked down the road. To my knowledge he was never mentioned again to the corps. I have no idea what happened to his suitcase etc., or if the police came to investigate or claim his things. We just turned our eyes on the target ahead and hoped for the best.

Looking back: To say that we dodged a potential bullet by those two being discovered by DCI BEFORE we competed in Kansas, City is probably a huge understatement. I am very grateful for the timing of the whole thing. I also know that I can wear my ring proudly (as Gail requested of us) without the win having been polluted by those two selfish A-holes being a part of our performance. The SCV uniform has never been so disrespected as it was in 1989... in my opinion.

The current Corps Director of the new Dallas, TX "DCA Finalist & High Percussion" corps The Vigilantes – Roger Treacher - is a former member of The Dagenham Crusaders. I’m friends with him (I consulted some this season with The Vigilantes. And we e-mail pretty regularly.) I could probably pick his brain and see if he has any further information on either of these two guys. Since he posts on here from time to time, maybe he’ll chime in.

The August 15 date mentioned in the above article for DCI notifying the corps about the second guy (the frenchhorn) also correlates with my memory of us already being at our finals week housing sight in a suburb of Kansas City.

One final note. The above article also contains the sentence "According to a DCI spokesperson, rumers of a third member marching illegally are not true." …in case anyone is confused about the number of members who were kicked out of the Santa Clara Vanguard during the 1989 season for being over-age -

Edited by bradrick
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About the Crossmen thing. From what I have been told MANY MANY corps marched overage members in the 70's. And they finally caught some corps. And now you won't find any overage members anymore. That the corps admin knows about anyway. Again, from what I have been told, the age rule just wasn't really enforced until the late 70's. I obviously don't know from experience, since I wasn't even a year old at the time of the SCV incident that is the topic of this thread. Lol

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SCV had two members who were kicked out at the end of the season. Both were overage guys from the UK who had aged out with the Dagenham Crusaders and came to SCV with false birth certificates and false passports.

Here's a scan of the Drum Corps World article dated August 31, 1989 which is titled "SCV not penalized for overage members".

scv-not-penalized-1.jpg

This article verifies that they did indeed have falsified passports and had allegedly committed an international felony by entering the U.S. with false documents. I suppose today they'd be in a lot more trouble. It also explains why SCV was not penalized by DCI.

There are some things that have happened in my life that I remember in great detail. The experience of being in SCV is definitely one of them.

One of the overage guys was a snare player who I'm certain was kicked out when we were at our housing sight for the Centerville, Ohio show. The above article says GR was notified on August 8 about the first guy (the snare). Since we were presumably already at our housing site for the "Dayton" show, I'm sure my memory is correct about where we were when we found out. The website corpsreps.com identifies that as Dayton, but I’m pretty sure it was Centerville, Ohio for the housing. The actual show there was on August 10 – eight days before Nats.

I remember the Cadets of Bergen County were staying at the same school as us that day. When we walked out of the gym to head to our practice field, the Cadets’ pit section was just outside the gym playing the “Bring Him Home” intro. I remember thinking “OMG. That is going to make the most awesome ballad.” I found out later it was actually the beginning of their closer. (I was kinda excited and anticipating seeing the Cadet’s Les Mis show. Many of us SCV peeps really loved the music from Les Mis. I had bought the Broadway Cast CD and loved every second of it. We had actually done “8s & 8s” in the early season to the confrontation scene between Valjean and Javier - as part of Dan Dilullo’s system of getting us to march differently and interpreting the emotion of each piece. )

The corps was in such a laser beam focussed state at this point. There was not much time to think about the missing snare. SCV’s rehearsals at the time were VERY planned, aggressively paced and had practically no “down time” - so there wasn’t much time to think about anything extraneous. And we were being pushed and pushed by the staff and ourselves to keep up the momentum we had already established. (This was a position they had been in many times before and weren’t about to let us drop the intensity during the “home stretch”.)

I do remember that the freshly booted snare’s girlfriend (who was in the colorguard) was crying right before the beginning of rehearsal when she found out – and I think that’s the exact moment that the rest of us found out. I don’t believe there was any kind of official announcement made that day. If there was, I don’t remember one. And this ripple that went around as we all figured out what was going on appeared to make the other overage guy (who was a frenchhorn) kinda defensive and nervous. After a particular reset during rehearsal, somebody had apparently said something under their breath about HIM being a suspect now and he blurted out “And you know it’s not f------- true!” – glaring at all of us. I was pretty near him when that happened, and I remember thinking “OK. He at least knew that Mark was a fraud. Because now he’s acting guilty himself.” But the rehearsals flew by at the normal SCV pace and you just did what you were trained to do. Rise above it and focus on your own job.

The snareline had time to adjust their drill and close in that hole. Just how noticeable the adjustment was during finals has been the object of much commentary on DCP. I personally feel that taking into consideration how close it was to Championships, they did a pretty good job (considering how drilled into your head set points were at that point in the season).

The visible hole in the drill was from the aforementioned frenchhorn player who was kicked out after we were already at our housing sight in Kansas City. It was too late for us to do anything about that one. Someone recently posted a video of the Quarters performance on Facebook – so that helped jog my memory that we marched that hole for all three shows – Quarters, Semis & Finals. (I’d always known it was visible in the Semis video I have.)

I said before that I’m not 100% sure how we found out about Mark, the snare or who told us about him. But I'll never forget finals week in 89 when GR called us all together outside the school to tell us about a second British guy having just been kicked out for lying about his age. It was probably the maddest I ever saw GR in the two years I was a member of SCV when he was telling us. :laughing: His face turned blood red and his face kinda quivered a little. The guy acually had tears whelling up in his eyes. But it was kinda like tears of rage (which is impossible to forget). You have to undersatand how much we all loved GR. In that moment, I think every one of us would have found that guy and beat him to a pulp JUST FOR GAIL. JUST FOR HURTING GAIL SO DEEPLY. Nevermind what he'd just done to us. (We'd worry about that some other time.) You could really feel how betrayed Gail felt. These guys were willing to forge documents and jeopardize an entire SCV season (and what looked like a pretty good shot at the title). But I think we understood that we still had a job to do. It was like Gail was mad enough for all of us, so we didn't need to get mixed up in it.

I was about to type "I guess I’ve blocked it out, because I can’t remember his name". But as I was replaying this whole thing in my mind over and over... the name Kevin keeps coming up. So maybe his name was Kevin.

Gail told us he had told the guy to start walking because he didn’t want to be at the school when we were informed of his betrayal. We were told that he had left all of his belongings in the gym and walked down the road. To my knowledge he was never mentioned again to the corps. I have no idea what happened to his suitcase etc., or if the police came to investigate or claim his things. We just turned our eyes on the target ahead and hoped for the best.

Looking back: To say that we dodged a potential bullet by those two being discovered by DCI BEFORE we competed in Kansas, City is probably a huge understatement. I am very grateful for the timing of the whole thing. I also know that I can wear my ring proudly (as Gail requested of us) without the win having been polluted by those two selfish A-holes being a part of our performance. The SCV uniform has never been so disrespected as it was in 1989... in my opinion.

The current Corps Director of the new Dallas, TX "DCA Finalist & High Percussion" corps The Vigilantes – Roger Treacher - is a former member of The Dagenham Crusaders. I’m friends with him (I consulted some this season with The Vigilantes. And we e-mail pretty regularly.) I could probably pick his brain and see if he has any further information on either of these two guys. Since he posts on here from time to time, maybe he’ll chime in.

The August 15 date mentioned in the above article for DCI notifying the corps about the second guy (the frenchhorn) also correlates with my memory of us already being at our finals week housing sight in a suburb of Kansas City.

One final note. The above article also contains the sentence "According to a DCI spokesperson, rumers of a third member marching illegally are not true." …in case anyone is confused about the number of members who were kicked out of the Santa Clara Vanguard during the 1989 season for being over-age -

Wow, thanks for the info.

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Fantastic info, Brad. Very insightful. What a strange thing to do at the age of 25. I believe they were 25. Saying goodbye to drum corps when I aged out was rather hard and I remember watching the 1999 corps with such longing. But to do such a thing to march again is vary peculiar.

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