GuardDad

Another year without a regional in New York. Maybe someone will step up before it's too late.

I've seen the explanation before. But to lower scores by more than a point in each caption is just an easy way for not to change the order. If been told that each judge is told not to give the same score in the cation they are judging so as to not cause a tie. Sorry in some classes and some performances it should come down to one or two captions making the difference. Not an artificial spread. Sorry it just my opinion

Wow! What a lame excuse. Basically what your saying is there might as well not be finals as they must have been but in the right order in semi-finals. Sorry my opinion is different. The judges should each guard in each round and let the scores fall way they may. With that thinking it means that a guard the blows up in finals will likely only fall one position. What is the point of having finals then? So what are you suppose to tell your kids who worked hard all year and make finals and the drop 9 points in finals. What a disappointment for the kids. The bottom line is the judges get paid and they are supposed to know how to judge. This year’s SA class from 10-16 was separated by only 0.8 points going into finals. That should mean that if one of those guards had a bad show they should have dropped several positions, but with the current thinking of lowering to scores and spreading them out then that didn’t happen. I’m not saying that guards didn’t finish in the correct position but I heard many people that thought that West Orange should have finished higher. This also means that if a guard has a bad performance in prelims is sunk and they have no way to recover regardless of what they do. Instead of putting everything in prelimins, it should be focused towards finals and let the best guard for that show win. A better way would be to have a double panel for finals and in the event of a tie then the high and low scores are dropped to determine the winner. If they are still the same then it is a tie. I saw several guards that got standing ovations and others that barely got any applause from the crowd. Remember this is supposed to be for the kids and what difference does it make if there is a tie.

OK we all know that the weather was bad. So enough about that. Let's here some reviews about the guards.

I'm assuming you are talking about the Mid-York and Northeast circuits. They don't really work together which is sad. Both circuits would be so much stronger if they would just work together. I think Mid-York is a stronger circuit do to the large amount of guards in the Syracuse area. When they have a show in Syracuse there are usually about 20+ guards in competition. In the Northeast circuit they usually have about 12-15 guards at each competition. Maybe someday they will set there differences asside and work together.

Does anyone know of a good paint to use on the floors. In the past we have used very expensive ink paints that doesn't crack but it smells up the entire school and we have been asked not to use it. Someone suggested that we use house paint and then use a lacquer finish over it. I've seen some very interesting designs the people have done in the past. Any recommendations that you could give me would be greatly appreciated.