Morphy00

There unfortunately isn't one answer as to why the corps is smaller this year. It truly fits into the "stuff happens" category. As I talked with fellow hornline members at the end of last season, the reasons why people weren't planning on marching this season were all over the board. Some were getting married, some were starting new careers, some were going to DCI, some were starting families, some just wanted a summer off to relax and then some didn't want to march because all of their friends has decided not to march, and undoubtedly there were likely some that didn't have fun or had issues with the staff. My reason? I had marched 19 years and wanted to see what "normal" people do with their summers. MBI has historically (in the last 10 years) had a good sized contingent of long-term vets the come back year after year so recruiting hasn't been a large focus. You can usually pull in a few bodies over the course of the season, whether HS kid, veteran or jr corps kid when they get off tour. This year however, it ended up being a perfect storm of vets not returning that I think even the best skilled recruiting corps would struggle with. I think regardless of score or placement at finals, the corps itself will emerge a stronger entity after this season through bolstered recruiting practices, improved alumni relations and a little introspection on what the corps wants itself to be. Note: I do not speak for the corps. Any observations are my own.

Glad to know we never "pushed" the Bucs even when we beat them Even though it was voted and agreed upon, it's still a valid question. If the design team and staff of a corps doesn't know how that caption is judged, then they can't make relevant decisions to improve that score. Is communication judge A really like drum solos and curvy forms, they will likely give a higher score to a drum heavy show with lots of squiggles. If that drum heavy show is then judged by communication Judge B, who likes more horn moments and geometric drill, it will likely affect the score negatively. A caption should have some sort of defined criteria so if anyone ever questions the scoring, it can be easily defended rather than just "meh, I just didn't "get" the show"

Since I've been a part of this activity, (which is getting to be a long time now) MBI has always taken one weekend off per month during the summer. Heck, with how the 4th lined up this year, we got two weekends off in July. As other have mentioned, it's an essential time to decompress, spend time with your family and loved ones and just give your body a break. We are off this coming weekend due to DCI finals. As the average age of corps drop, you will likely see more corps have more weekends off and still put on extremely well performed, technical shows. Blame the millennials and their inability to commit to things, but it's becoming a reality.

2010

MBI and Govenaires will be on DCI sheets tomorrow in Iowa, then DCA sheets Saturday in Racine.

We should all take this moment to remember who won LAST year! (Cabs were't playing then)

I'm not saying it's that easy, no. But if every year in Minnesota DCA is solely represented by MBI, Kilties and Govies then that's all the area will ever know. It's not going to be a quick win no matter which way you look at it. But after a few years of new groups being introduced to the area, fan bases might develop for these other corps and people might be willing to travel to finals from outside of the Northeast because now they understand and enjoy the product of not just their local corps, but other corps that will be in attendance. It's the show sponsors job to advertise for their show and the corps in attendance, not to advertise for DCA in general or the corps elsewhere. The best analogy I can think of is a circus. The circus proper is DCA. If MBI is the dancing horses, Govies are the acrobats and Kitlies are the bears on bicycles, then for the Midwest folks, that's all they ever see. So to them, THAT is the circus. They don't realize that there are also lion tamers and clowns and fire breathers. You can tell someone they should go to Rochester and see the circus, but in their mind they've already seen it because they've never experienced a lion tamer or a fire breather.

The best 'why' I can think of is it's for the good of DCA as an organization, including all the member corps. If you ask around the marching arts communities (high school bands, WGI drumlines and guards, etc) in this area if they had ever heard of DCI, the answer would be a resounding "YES". If you ask that same group if they'd ever heard of DCA, the answer would be a staunch "NO". Even when I started as a marching member in MBI in the late 90's it took me a couple years to really know what DCA was. I guess the biggest question to ask is; Does DCA want to grow? Does DCA care that few people west of Ohio (outside core drum corps nerds) have never heard of the 12-time DCA champion Reading Buccaneers?

Fred the reason why I started this topic wasn't to say that any corps HAS to travel regardless of whether it's in their best interest financially. If any corps were to make a trip and forego repairing an ailing equipment truck or feeding their members on a long camp day, then they would have chosen very poorly. The reason I started this topic was to get people thinking about the fact that MBI doesn't have a magic wand to make these trips happen nor some mysterious financial genie. Other corps CAN make the trip and I think eventually they should, but in order for a trip to happen in 2016, they need to be talking about and planning for it now.

Yeah there were a few corps at that "Senior preview" show in '99 that was tied to DCI Finals - http://corpsreps.com/scores.cfm?view=scoreshow&showid=1999006 The most recent non-Midwest DCA corps to come to the Midwest was when the Renegades traveled to Dekalb, IL in 2004

For the past 7 years Minnesota Brass through great financial expense and member time used has traveled eastward mid-season to perform and compete against corps that we used to not see until finals. The results of that are a rather mixed bag. On one hand, that mid-season show often isn't the best product we can give due to various travel related factors, but on the other hand it's hard to argue the fact that our placements have remained fairly high since we started the consistent early season trips in 2007 (no trip in 2008). I know we have some financial genius' as part of our administration who are able to wrangle 3 (if you include Racine) significant trips out of our budget every single summer and still are able to keep our dues and member expenses to a reasonable level, but surely some other corps can do the same. Will a Eastern corps ever come this direction?

Looking forward to the reviews as always Jeff! In regards to the comment above, I feel that as the average age of DCA corps go lower and the difficulty of shows go higher this stuff will be happening more and more. DCA corps don't have the rehearsal time to truly make everyone a soldier like DCI corps do. We made a seemingly simple change in June during our opener and changed a horn snap from count 5 to count 7 and that snap was a constant issue all the way up through last weekend. Those of us that are more seasoned in drum corps handle change better. Then when you take some of these kids and put them on a large stage like finals, their brains go funny. We had weird stuff happen finals weekend during shows and rehearsals that never happened the entire season, all because people got stuck in their own heads. At prelims our DM forgot to bring the hornline to attention at the beginning of the show. That's something that never happened all season and something we certainly didn't have a backup plan for. Thankfully we recovered fairly quickly.

I like that idea, but I might break it down a little further. 1-4, 5-8, 8-12

Looking at the most recent scores, it seems to be most of the top open class corps are averaging a score increase of around 2.5 pts per week. If that average stays the same, MBI would have had to have scored a 96.45+ last weekend to keep that final time slot. That seems rather unrealistic. That 2.5 could be the difference between going on 1st or 5th at prelims depending on the year. As much as I wish I did, I don't know of a good solution that is both fair and flexible enough to cover all the 'what if' scenarios such as rain-outs.

Why wouldn't you mention the name Chops Inc. anywhere in the post other than the email address?

Since you know the real reason, perhaps you'd like to share? Corps making significant announcements in the vaguest way possible is exhausting and stupid. If one of the most crowd pleasing and successful organizations in DCA has suddenly decided, "We don't want to play in this playground anymore", I think that merits a reasoning by the group and a discussion by the public. DCA as a whole is affected by this and it would be selfish to think otherwise.

Ouch, yeah way too expensive.

Yeah, especially the past 5 years I've marched, we've made significant changes throughout late July and August. It's not unusual for the corps and the membership eats it up. Don't be confused by the verbiage in the message though. I'm fairly certain the corps is not doing an entire new closer from start to finish, but rather enhancing the current closer with improved drill. The only time I can recall doing a massive overhaul on drill was 2006 where I think we re-wrote about 90% of what we started with. That was painful.

I think some of you guys greatly overestimate how many people in corps, whether DCI or DCA, actually care enough to post here, or even know what DCP is. Hell, I routinely go multiple years without checking this forum. The younger the member, the less likely they will come to this site. The fact that C2 members don't come here and post is probably because they don't care or even know about this site. There's no plot. There's no ulterior motives. No gag order on members. Just people that like to play music for you, blissfully ignorant of all the drama that community forums like this present.

I remember going on last at DCI prelims in 1999 with MBI. It was an unforgettable experience. Full house at Camp Randall and the crowd went absolutely nuts for us. I hope the folks marching this weekend get that same rush.

I agree with this wholeheartedly and it cannot be stated enough. For the most part everyone rehearses similar amounts of time and I'd argue that most corps are at roughly the same talent level. It's the design that makes or breaks a championship corps.

I can't agree with this enough. Even after watching rehearsal a couple times, and knowing this would happen, my heart still skipped a beat when I saw people falling over.

I love the T.O.B. calculation! I have the utmost confidence in my team to put out a really fine performance next weekend, but I can speak from experience that the early season trips out East are brutal. Bus legs should never be discounted! Good luck to all corps!

I've always wanted to do New World Symphony. Guess we could twist Black Dog into it somehow to keep with the Zepplin connection of the past few years

Thanks for the reminder that I've been marching for over a decade