Recruitment Problems, Financial Stress, and Poor Leadership, Oh My!

[cybersnyder]

9 hours ago, DAvery said:

On a similar note, if I was wanting to start a drum corps in today's environment I would start with WGI winds.  In my experience it is a healthier, more positive and lower cost option to DCI, or even DCA. 

I think this is the future of corps-style (allow me to loosely use that term) activities. You can fit the entire group in a bus and a trailer. Logistics are much easier and when you're playing indoors, you can get the Live or Memorex effect more easily. This isn't going to happen overnight, but it just seems like the current model of marching is in decline.

[Tim K]

25 minutes ago, cybersnyder said:

I think this is the future of corps-style (allow me to loosely use that term) activities. You can fit the entire group in a bus and a trailer. Logistics are much easier and when you're playing indoors, you can get the Live or Memorex effect more easily. This isn't going to happen overnight, but it just seems like the current model of marching is in decline.

Would the high school band folks agree that the activity is in decline? 

We also have more corps in Open Class and another corps moving to World Class.

Soundsport is growing.

Attendance at finals is inching toward the numbers of the glory days. Regionals attendance is on the increase.

we’ll never see the glory days with lots of local corps at all different levels, but things are certainly better than a few years back.

[BRASSO]

2 hours ago, cybersnyder said:

I think this is the future of corps-style (allow me to loosely use that term) activities. You can fit the entire group in a bus and a trailer. Logistics are much easier and when you're playing indoors, you can get the Live or Memorex effect more easily. This isn't going to happen overnight, but it just seems like the current model of marching is in decline.

 WGI Winds does not conflict with the scholastic Marching Band schedules quite as much either.  its the future of the Marching Arts realm, imo. Competition performances done Indoors. Football concussion research studies will increasingly show the long term harmful health effects of playing football, and once  Mom's decide their boys won't be playing football, that will probably have a chain reaction effect on marching bands that perform essentially as halftime entertainment for football games on football fields. Ironically, when H.S. and College Football was predominantly a northeast sport in its early years origins , many H.S.'s and Colleges in the Southwest actually dropped football, and others in the South and Southwest banned the game of football outright from being added as a sport to their South and Southwest schools/ colleges offerings. It was banned for being deemed " too harmful to one's health " at the time. Perhaps not a lot of folks here might know this historic, and quite ironic tidbit,  so I just thought I'd toss it out in passing as we kill time awaiting the start of the 2018 DCI/ DCA season.

Edited April 25, 2018 by BRASSO

[cybersnyder]

7 minutes ago, BRASSO said:

 WGI Winds does not conflict with the scholastic Marching Band schedules quite as much either.  its the future of the Marching Arts realm, imo. Football concussion research studies will increasingly show the long term harmful effects of playing football, and once suburban Mom's decide their boys won't be playing football, that will probably have a chain reaction effect on marching bands that perform essentially as halftime entertainment for football games on football fields. Ironically, when H.S. and College Football was predominantly a northeast sport in its early years origins , many H.S.'s and Colleges in the Southwest actually dropped football, and others in the South and Southwest banned the game of football outright from being added as a sport to their South and Southwest schools/ colleges as the sport of football was deemed " too harmful to one's health " at the time. Not a lot of folks know that historic, and quite ironic tidbit, I don't believe, so I thought I'd mention it in passing as we kill time awaiting the start of the 2018 DCI/ DCA season.

I live in Howard County, MD where we have a county-wide school system, but you go to the elementary, middle and high school in which you are districted. It's a good school system overall, but we end up doing a poor job of sharing opportunities across the system. The reasoning behind keeping people in their districted schools is to keep white flight, or more accurately in our fairly diverse area, higher income flight from happening. Of course, it still happens to some extent but when your "bad" schools have over 80% going on to higher education, how bad are they really? So, with that background, we had a high school drop its football program last year due to lack of interest. If you were an awesome football athlete, your opportunity to do something with it completely dried up. They did not allow players to go to adjacent high schools to play and by adjacent, I'm talking only 2-3 miles away. Anyways, their marching band is one of the better ones in the area. Will be interesting (from an academic viewpoint) to see what happens to a marching band that no longer has a football team. In this particular case, I suspect they will survive as they have a pretty strong music program in general.

[cybersnyder]

24 minutes ago, Lithium Nitro said:

I think especially for the Pacific Northwest, high school band is only growing. This year in the local winterguard circuit was around 400+ members, 2 years ago it was half that.  Oregon Crusaders are continuing to pump out excellence, Seattle Cascades are growing, even though Rivermen are inactive for 2018 it is a good sign for the PNW. Maybe even Pacific Dream (from the same parent company as Rivermen) will move into DCA.  On drum corps as a whole with Vessel rejoining Open Class, Music City moving up to World and lots of corps planning the jump to Open or World (Open - Armada, Arsenal, Hub City, Storm, Lone Star, Encorps, etc).  We could see World Class grow by 3+ corps in the near future, Legends, Louisiana Stars, Guardians, etc. I think that these are short term losses for the activity but it will continue to survive and grow as it has through the decades.

Yeah, I guess it's a regional thing. If drum corps survived the fuel price crisis, it can survive anything.

[BRASSO]

22 minutes ago, cybersnyder said:

 Will be interesting (from an academic viewpoint) to see what happens to a marching band that no longer has a football team. In this particular case, I suspect they will survive as they have a pretty strong music program in general.

 Yes, it will be interesting to see what happens. Things change. Communities tend to support ( and not support ) the things that they deem important in their communities. And just as you aptly pointed out, not all communities tend to value the same things. At the University level, what is valued there amongst the Universities can be even more diverse in regards to what they value amongst themselves as Universities.

Edited April 25, 2018 by BRASSO

[BRASSO]

1 hour ago, Lithium Nitro said:

I think especially for the Pacific Northwest, high school band is only growing. This year in the local winterguard circuit was around 400+ members, 2 years ago it was half that.  Oregon Crusaders are continuing to pump out excellence, Seattle Cascades are growing, even though Rivermen are inactive for 2018 it is a good sign for the PNW. Maybe even Pacific Dream (from the same parent company as Rivermen) will move into DCA.  On drum corps as a whole with Vessel rejoining Open Class, Music City moving up to World and lots of corps planning the jump to Open or World (Open - Armada, Arsenal, Hub City, Storm, Lone Star, Encorps, etc).  We could see World Class grow by 3+ corps in the near future, Legends, Louisiana Stars, Guardians, etc. I think that these are short term losses for the activity but it will continue to survive and grow as it has through the decades.

 Maybe. I still think the growth in the numbers of groups, participants will be found in WGI over the next 25 years, not with wholly non scholastic DCI Corps that compete in outdoor football stadiums in the summer months. I really don't envision too many additions to the large and expensive groups that compete in World Class Division of DCI anyway. The trend line there is mostly flat lined for growth the last decade. Add one new Corps to that Division, but lose another Corps to the wayside. WGI, by contrast, is adding new groups, ( both scholastic and otherwise ) new divisions, new participants, new instrumentations, new lighting, new sound,  new technologies, new fans etc by leaps and bounds the last decade. 'Don't see anything about to stop that accelerating upward growth on the horizon either. Things change. Do they ever.

Edited April 25, 2018 by BRASSO

[Jeff Ream]

4 hours ago, Dchristian125 said:

Teal Sound wants to return. However, after the events involving YEA! occured, they feel that the atmosphere is unstable right now. Also, before they make an annoucement on their return, they are looking over all aspects of their plans regarding recruiting, finances, staff members, etc. They are waiting for the right moment to return. 

 

They want to make sure that they have everything set. They don't want to make any mistakes.

Teal Sound needs to look in the mirror and see what took them down. Not just a big bus bill. they need to examine the books....what they spent, what they had in the bank, what kind f capital programs they had, what kind of revenues they had. They need to have their financial #### in serious order before even calling Indy and asking to be evaluated.

[Jeff Ream]

3 hours ago, cybersnyder said:

In my area we have high schools with graduating classes of 300-450 and you'll see 30 member marching bands. Some of the schools dropped their marching bands completely and just have pep bands. For the most part, band isn't seen as a good resumé builder for college applications, sports are seen as more beneficial. I don't know if this is happening elsewhere, but I still see huge bands from Texas and elsewhere.

band doesnt bring in money. football does. and state tests dont count band towards he results that get tax dollars

[Jeff Ream]

2 hours ago, cybersnyder said:

I live in Howard County, MD where we have a county-wide school system, but you go to the elementary, middle and high school in which you are districted. It's a good school system overall, but we end up doing a poor job of sharing opportunities across the system. The reasoning behind keeping people in their districted schools is to keep white flight, or more accurately in our fairly diverse area, higher income flight from happening. Of course, it still happens to some extent but when your "bad" schools have over 80% going on to higher education, how bad are they really? So, with that background, we had a high school drop its football program last year due to lack of interest. If you were an awesome football athlete, your opportunity to do something with it completely dried up. They did not allow players to go to adjacent high schools to play and by adjacent, I'm talking only 2-3 miles away. Anyways, their marching band is one of the better ones in the area. Will be interesting (from an academic viewpoint) to see what happens to a marching band that no longer has a football team. In this particular case, I suspect they will survive as they have a pretty strong music program in general.

many band circuits allow students in the same district to be in the band of a different high school in the district if their home school doesn't have one.