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Most Inspired/Improved Finals Performances


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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".

How about 1987 Sky Ryders? On top of everything else they had going on, I also remember them because I hadn't heard a single clean solo from them until finals, when they nailed every single one of them.

And if no one mentioned '88 SCV yet....they certainly hyped up in finals.

Honestly, though, most of the quantum-leap moments I have witnessed have been in prelims, or outside of world-class (could write a book on those). And I suspect most of the tangible up-a-notch performances among the top 12 took place in the 1970s, before I started attending. Since then, with the continual elevation in preparation and professionalism, Thursday/Friday performances have been much closer to Saturday.

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I wasn't in the stands for any of this because I was in heated competition with them. I did see them at finals though, as much as it hurt....

Scouts '08. They were out of the top 12 pretty much all year. And we the Crossmen were sitting pretty in 12th most of the year. Made first night show since 2004 in San Antonio. Great experience. We were in a good spot to make it up until quarterfinals. Supposedly Scouts absolutely killed it all week. It helped we came out flat in quarters. But they passed us and made it into finals. They had a good show at finals crowd was into it, and was great way to start off such a historic night. We had a great show at semis, and it just wasn't enough to make up the ground we lost the day before.

We still should have beat them!!! Haha

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88 Madison Scouts

Agreed. Didn't they go from 4th to 1st from semis to finals? I may be mistaken.

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Agreed. Didn't they go from 4th to 1st from semis to finals? I may be mistaken.

That scenario sounds like Phantom '96. Scouts had their highest score of the year at semis in '88, and a much larger lead over second place than they ended up with at finals.

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Agreed. Didn't they go from 4th to 1st from semis to finals? I may be mistaken.

No, they won semis as well. That was the experiment year when DCI didn't announce the semi scores until after finals. The scores for both contests are available at corpsreps.

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Blue Devils 2002. Saw them at one of their first shows of the year (in Alabama), and the show did not work well nor was it being sold. Fast forward to the big Nashville show and......WOW! What an amazing turnaround! The show was light years better in terms of design and content (thanks to the tweaks/rewrites) and the members were performing the doo-willy out of it. You can hear how much crowd support they then received at Finals on the recordings.

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Blue Devils 2002.

In a similar vein, this year when I saw BD at the live movie event at the beginning of the season, I was convinced that they wouldn't finish in the top 5. In fact, I was appalled that a show that boring, easy, and confusing could have even been written for a world class corps to perform. By the end of the season though... WOW. One of my favorites! :)

I guess you should never count any corps out, especially BD.

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I have to be a homer and go with 1999 Cadets. It may not show on the video, because the end product was still pretty dirty, but things locked in that last performance that hadn't locked once all season, including rehearsals.

I marched for a long time and won DCI titles in other years, but nothing really matched the feeling under the stadium after that last 1999 performance. Really remarkable stuff. Even Van Doren was impressed, and that's... saying something.

As much as I HATED marching 1999's show, I have to agree with you. I don't know what happened at finals that couldn't have happened a little earlier in the season, but I was easily in tears at the end of that night.

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As a marching member, I marched one year where we only had one "great" show all season long, and that was 2001 Phantom Regiment. That performance was almost like a sigh of relief after the season we had just had. I'm pretty sure the only reason I came back in 2002 was because I listened to the judges "mini-freak out" on the DVD all winter long.

As far as watching a performance, 2000 Cavaliers. The edge of chaos, they pushed and hyped that finals performance so hard. Had they performed like they had all that year prior, they wouldn't have won.

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