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Most Inspired/Improved Finals Performances


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In the spirit of March Madness, I like it when someone or some group accepts the challenge and rises to the occasion - putting on their most inspired or improved performance to date, maxing out, doing everything they could with what they had to work with. Do any particular DCI FINALS performances come to mind where YOU WERE IN THE STANDS AS A FAN that made you take notice, like "whoa, that was on a completely different level for them". Feel free to comment if that inspired performance was also reflected in higher scores or placement.

IMO I think Boston over the past several years has done a great job and are underrated as well.

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Phantom '08 is the obvious one, of course, but here's another...

SCV '05. I didn't get to see them early season, but from judging the numbers and what was floating around, things were rough. Maybe that's all it was--poor reception of their scores translating into poor word-of-mouth. Clearly at some point late season they pulled it together.

I also think the VANGUARD yell that year may have been the loudest of all time...

...but maybe that's just me looking back with rosy-tinted glasses :satisfied:

Agree on this. SCV lit it up at Finals in 2005. Not their highest placing SCV Corps... far from it.... that year but they really won over the Crowd in Foxboro, Mass and among all the Corps in the Finals they were one of the favorites with their show performance on Finals Night. The crowd loved them and they got a rousing reception at the end of their show. They finished 8th that nite, but the crowd didn't care about any of that, as they had really sold the show.

Edited by BRASSO
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IMO I think Boston over the past several years has done a great job and are underrated as well.

The Boston Crusaders made tremendous strides from June to August of this past season I thought. By Finals Night, they really had picked it up a notch.

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how about Bluecoats 2006 - after semi's they were sitting in 6th behind two former champions The Cadets and SCV, and proceeded to smoke at finals and leap frog both to snag their highest finish (4th) to date.

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I would have to vote for 1979's 27th Lancers.They had a disappointing 1978 season, some predicted they wouldn't make the top 12, though they pulled off a great effort in the finals, but at the beginning of 79, the show appeared to be barely finished, and it was not clean, a rarity for the Lancers back then, and many local fans predicted it would be too difficult a show to master and wrote them off (Boston area fans were tougher on drum corps than they are with sports teams, just ask anyone who marched with BAC, North Star, or 27th). As the season progressed, it was clear they were mastering the show and when August arrived, 27th was in fine form.

Note from Saturday March 24th: I didn't read the original post as carefully as I should have; I saw in the stands in bold type andthought it meant seeing the show live. I did see 27th live in 1979, the performance closest to finals would have been the CYO Nationals in August,but I saw the finals performance live in the living room via PBS. DCP doesn't have a delete button, so I can't delete.

Edited by Tim K
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We aren't just talking about placement right? but actual perception of performance. What comes to mind for me is 1990 Star of Indiana. They just had a lot of extra fire that night that was not there the previous two nights. Another one is 1994 Cadets especially in percussion. These days, corps are so consistent that there usually isn't a "miracle" performance by a corps. Corps moving up placement wise have as much to do with "CI" than there actual performance.

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1993 SCV. Saw them in June and it was embarrassing. I was glad I had aged out the year before. I thought they might not even make finals. They were shockingly improved in Jackson. read Lee Rudnicki's short book Tale of a Drumline for some really funny stories from that year.

That drum break deserves way more credit than it gets, too.

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Phantom '08 is the obvious one, of course, but here's another...

SCV '05. I didn't get to see them early season, but from judging the numbers and what was floating around, things were rough. Maybe that's all it was--poor reception of their scores translating into poor word-of-mouth. Clearly at some point late season they pulled it together.

I also think the VANGUARD yell that year may have been the loudest of all time...

...but maybe that's just me looking back with rosy-tinted glasses :satisfied:

Agree on this. SCV lit it up at Finals in 2005. Not their highest placing SCV Corps... far from it.... that year but they really won over the Crowd in Foxboro, Mass and among all the Corps in the Finals they were one of the favorites with their show performance on Finals Night. The crowd loved them and they got a rousing reception at the end of their show. They finished 8th that nite, but the crowd didn't care about any of that, as they had really sold the show.

Add me to the list. I had heard APDs from early in the year, and the show was rough. They tore it up at Finals though, a great show.

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Although I am breaking the OP's rules in two ways (I was ON the field, and SEMIS was better...) but I have to nominate 89 Suncoast. We were a train wreck at the beginning of the year, with less than 40 horns and a LOT of holes. Scores reflected this:


Hershey, PA	
7/1
1	Cadets			76.7
2	Bluecoats		72.7	
3	Crossmen		60.6	
4	Dutch Boy		60.0	
5	Florida Wave	        57.4
6	Suncoast Sound	        54.9
7	Ventures		43.8

Philadelphia, PA
7/2
1	Cadets			76.9
2	Bluecoats		71.7
3	Crossmen		63.7
4	Suncoast Sound	        53.1
5	Florida Wave	        52.1
6	Ventures		44.9

Compare that with our semifinals performance (easily our best of the year):

Kansas City, MO	 	 	
Open Class Semi-Finals	
1	Vanguard		98.2	
2	Phantom Regiment	96.9	
3       Cavaliers 	        94.8	
4	Blue Devils		94.6	
5       Cadets			94.4	
6	Star of Indiana		93.3	
7	Madison Scouts		92.9	
8	Bluecoats		90.3	
9	Suncoast Sound		90.2
10	Freelancers		87.4	
11	Velvet Knights		86.3
12	Crossmen		85.8	
13	Dutch Boy		85.5	 	 	 
14	Spirit of Atlanta	82.2	 	 	 
14	Sky Ryders		82.2	 	 	 
16	Blue Knights		81.2	 	 	 
17	Boston Crusaders	78.8

We passed corps that were 10 pointing us, and very nearly closed the almost 20 point gap to Bluecoats. At finals we had 43 horns (or something like that). Not too shabby...

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