hostrauser

I know more than some and less than quite a few but, even with all the knowledge and expertise DCI assembles for Championship week judging, sometimes they just get it wrong. Fix DCI's Champions list. Rewrite history. Name the corps that should have won but didn't (1995 Blue Devils). Or defend "unpopular" champions that you are certain were indeed the correct choice (2019 Blue Devils). Or don't defend any of your choices. You are king here, and your opinion is beyond reproach. For me, I went back to 1987, since that is the oldest year I have seen all 12 Finalist shows. 1987 Santa Clara Vanguard 1988 Madison Scouts 1989 Phantom Regiment 1990 Star of Indiana 1991 Star of Indiana 1992 Cavaliers 1993 Cadets 1994 Blue Devils 1995 Blue Devils 1996 Phantom Regiment 1997 Blue Devils 1998 Cadets 1999 Santa Clara Vanguard 2000 Cadets 2001 Cavaliers 2002 Cavaliers 2003 Blue Devils 2004 Blue Devils 2005 Cadets 2006 Phantom Regiment 2007 Blue Devils 2008 Phantom Regiment 2009 Carolina Crown 2010 Blue Devils 2011 Cadets 2012 Carolina Crown 2013 Carolina Crown 2014 Blue Devils 2015 Carolina Crown 2016 Bluecoats 2017 Santa Clara Vanguard 2018 Santa Clara Vanguard 2019 Blue Devils

Am I alone in thinking that the Bluecoats had a good-not-great show that shouldn't have been as close to the Blue Devils as they were? Bluecoats seemed to have a problem with hot mics at Finals and I heard more than one teeth-itchingly-bad intonation errors in the trumpets, especially in the big blow-down section at the end of the show. It certainly wasn't the baby-throwing fest for me that many others found it to be. I would have put Coats around 97.5, I thought they were at least 0.5 behind BD. Crown/SCV is a tougher call for me. Crown was so much better musically, but that was not a Top 3 visual program and the judges (rightly) dinged them. I felt SCV had the much more advanced show design and performance interpretation, while Crown excelled more at some of the technical precision performance aspects. I would be fine with the corps in either order, and agree that they should have been very close.

Completely deserved, too.

Jeff Prosperie is one of the most honest, high-integrity judges DCI has, in any caption. If he gives you a good score, you earned it. If he has you behind other corps, they earned it more. Doesn't matter what the corps names and uniforms are. And this is the first time JP has had the Blue Devils 1st in percussion during Championships week in a decade. Did he put BD 1st in percussion at 2017 Finals? No. 2016 Finals? No. 2015 Finals? No. 2014 Prelims? No. 2011 Finals? No. 2009 Finals? ...Yes. But then, EVERY percussion judge at EVERY show had Blue Devils 1st in percussion. They went undefeated in the caption that year.

Ironically, I watched the Flo stream in 2017 and 2018 and had zero problems. But Saturday night was a disaster. The Roku app must have crashed 15-20 times during Finals.

Updated through Season 29! I will keep this thread alive! 😂

This year saw former DCP-I champions in each class win their 2nd titles after a long time since their 1st. In World Class, Quiksilver won their 2nd title, with the prior coming in Season 17 during the Winter season of 2011-2012. In Open Class, Sparrow Regiment also claimed their 2nd title, with their prior win happening in Season 12 during the Summer of 2009. And in Class A, Nastalgia Percussion Ensemble achieved their 2nd gold medal, after their first championship was recorded during DCP-I Season 6 back in the Summer of 2006.

In World Class, Quiksilver held off hard-charging Texas United for Sweepstakes, and also squeaked ahead of them on the last night for the World Class championship... 57.5 Quiksilver 45.5 Texas United 32.0 Bellbrook Eagles 31.0 Kosmos 23.5 Star of Jupiter 16.5 L'Etoile du Nord 14.5 Nastalgia Vanguard 13.0 The Knights 10.0 Knights of Power 8.0 Anthem Resound 6.0 Cobalt Guard 1.5 #1 Corps 1.0 Violet Knights In Open Class we had (I think) a first in DCP-I history: the top 4 spots were unchanged every night of championships week. Sparrow Regiment swept the championships shows, but despite not medalling the Tokyo Brass hung on to the season's Sweepstakes... 55.0 Tokyo Brass 51.0 Sparrow Regiment 45.0 Nastalgia 32.0 Star of Hawaii 27.5 Mercury 24.0 Les Blanc Chevaliers 14.0 Knights of Sound 11.5 Texas Zephyrs Class A was the most volatile, with a different winner every night. The season long domination of Dragon Corps ended with a silver medal, the Class A Sweepstakes award, and the overall Season 29 DCP-I Sweepstakes Grand Champion award... 65.0 Dragon Corps 41.5 Cross 39.0 Hg 33.0 Cape Cod Regiment 26.0 Chicken Scouts 25.5 Knights of Note 23.0 Nastalgia Percussion Ensemble 7.0 L'Etoile du Nord B DCP-I Season 29 Sweepstakes Champions: World: Quiksilver Open: Tokyo Brass A: Dragon Corps OVERALL: DRAGON CORPS

I'll table the contraction talks for now. As long as we continue to have at least a full Finals' worth of corps in each division.

Congratulations to our Season 29 DCP-I Champions!

There have been issues with caption updates since last night and I am trying different things to try to get around it. Please stand by (and keep trying until it works).

Semifinals Results are posted. Congratulations to our 36 Finalists! Caption clock has been reset. In World Class, 95.000 wasn't enough to make Finals, as the Top 12 were only 1.15 apart. Open Class was easily the most spread out division, with nearly 7 points separating 1st and 12th. In Class A, the Top 7 were only 0.7 apart. Anybody can take it tomorrow night!

I've seen it. Seriously. I'm not as old as some of the legacy members on this board, but I've seen every DCI Finalist show from 1987-present and probably several dozen other shows scattershot from 1986 and prior.

Yes, what they do today is FAR more difficult. Marching around with your upper body locked in form is much easier to produce a consistent brass tone than, say, bent 45 degrees sideways and then switching positions in the middle of a passage. The core strength required by modern drum corps brass is just silly impressive. Go back and watch 1993 Star, really watch it. As impressive and ground breaking as that show was, the visual ensemble was a mess. Just lots of little glitches in timing of forms and movement. They were doing something SO new and SO difficult (for the time) that it never QUITE gelled as a whole. Every corps in the Top 12 today, probably the Top 25, is doing a visual book with demand that blows 93 Star out of the water. I'm not saying it's BETTER. That is a matter of opinion. As N.E. Brigand said earlier, non-stop movement is like music with no rests. But what the kids do today is sure as heck a lot harder. That's inarguable.

Mandarins are the first Finals newcomer to hold onto their Finals spot the following year since 1999-2000 Boston.

There was so much more MARCHING in 2005. There's a heck of a lot more MOVEMENT now. Every corps, every kid... they barely stop moving. There are no down moments where you're not contributing musically or visually.

I thought the Blue Devils' 1989 sop soloist seizing up at Finals would be the most painful to watch drum corps experience of my life. Then they made me sit through Dan Potter interviews...

Prelims results are up! All corps advance to tomorrow's Semifinals. Top 12 in each class advance to Saturday's Finals. Caption clock has been reset. You can make a one-time change of up to two captions. Changes must be in by Friday, 4pm Central.

Spartans beating Madison Scouts in Brass (and every visual subcaption) is because... SCVC and BDB aren't there? 😦

Brass Scores 16.80 Pacific Crest 16.40 Troopers 16.20 Spartans 16.15 Madison Scouts I just... don't even know how to process this. Congratulations to the Spartans! This may be their strongest corps ever!

I completely forgot to turn off caption changes last night because it has been a crazy, crazy week. Apologies. Captions for tonight's shows won't be locked in until 4pm Central. But the system is still set up to only allow 1 change per week just like it has for most of the season. The timer will be reset tonight AFTER the final prelims scores have posted and I've been able to update the DCPI spreadsheet.

Southwind and Louisiana Stars separated themselves from the pack yesterday, but 7th Regiment, Guardians, and River City Rhythm were only 0.45 apart.

You've cherry-picked two specific dates where the Blue Stars has anomalous scoring: unusually high on 7/24, unusually low on 8/4. Let's look at it another way, shall we? We could make a comparison between Stars and Bluecoats, or Jersey Surf, but we'll get a better read if we compare them to someone on their relative competitive level. Blue Stars vs. Blue Knights. The two corps have been neck and neck all season. 7/20 - San Antonio, TX 85.550 Blue Knights 85.225 Blue Stars (0.325 behind) 7/27 - Atlanta, GA 87.175 Blue Knights 86.913 Blue Stars (0.2625 behind) 8/2 - Allentown, PA 88.100 Blue Knights 88.025 Blue Stars (0.075 behind) We can see that at all the "major" shows, the Blue Stars have kept pace with the Blue Knights, despite BK supposedly "gaining" almost 3.5 more points advantage by your numbers. Despite placing behind BK at every major show, on 7/22 the Stars were 1.05 ahead of the Knights (at two different shows) and on 7/24 they were 1.80 ahead (again, at two different shows), leading to a conclusion that the Stars had inflated scores that week at those particular shows (probably due to lack of competition at their skill level and compression of scores upwards towards the Blue Devils).

No, Saturday. Caption Change Deadlines & Schedule Caption Change Deadline for Prelims/Caption changes turned off: Wednesday, August 7th, (roughly) 7pm Pacific / 8pm Mountain / 9pm Central / 10pm Eastern PRELIMS: Thursday, August 8th; caption changes turned back on (roughly) 7pm Pacific / 8pm Mountain / 9pm Central / 10pm Eastern; 1 update, only 2 captions per corps SEMIFINALS: Friday, August 9th, 2pm Pacific / 3pm Mountain / 4pm Central / 5pm Eastern captions locked in; after this at a time TBD the caption clock will be reset, another 1 update of up to 2 captions allowed per corps. FINALS: Saturday, August 10th, 2pm Pacific / 3pm Mountain / 4pm Central / 5pm Eastern captions locked in.

Yes. Star of Indiana with a 95.3 only good enough for 6th. In 2007 there were SEVEN corps that scored 94+. I think the 2007 Bluecoats 7th place score of 94.05 will never be topped, but who knows? This year, there might be some more "spacing" done in the Top 6, but I'd be surprised if the 6th place corps at Finals is below 94.