TroopAlum12

I love how several of the recent predictions left out the Bluecoats entirely. I feel like this next year is going to be one of the harder ones to predict. With all the shakeup going on in the top 12 as well as the fight in the 12-15 range getting tighter with so many corps on the cusp, it's getting hard to pin down a solid 12 corps that are a for-sure lock in any position. It's going to be an exciting season!

Not World Class, but as of today I have officially been hired on visual staff by the Battalion (open class). I'm stoked to be back in the game! Though this probably means I'll be spending less time around these parts.

Having "more local membership" would destroy some corps that already struggle to recruit talent. To be completely and utterly blunt here, some areas just don't have enough world-class talent to put together a corps that would have any hope of being competitive. That's the cold, hard truth. This same argument comes up every year from some old Troopers. They all complain that Troopers needs to focus more on getting mostly kids from Wyoming. To which my response always is and always shall be, "if you can find me 150 kids from Wyoming who have the ability to compete at the world class level, then by all means send them to an audition camp." Troopers moved most of their camps from Wyoming for this reason. Even in 2010 and 11 when we still had the majority of our camps in Wyoming or northern Colorado, there were only three kids from Wyoming in the corps. They did recruit from Wyoming schools. But kids just weren't interested or didn't make the cut. The vast majority of our membership was coming from three areas: Texas, the Pacific Northwest, and Utah. This created a logistical nightmare for the corps, as the only major airport near Wyoming is Denver, two hours away from Cheyenne and four from Casper. So they finally made the decision to move the camps to Texas, which was A) closer to the greatest chunk of our membership and B) allowed for rehearsal at schools right next to a major airport, meaning less money spent by the corps bussing people to rehearsal. Tell me again how forcing them to only use local kids would help them get back to finals.

So if I'm reading that infographic correctly, about 60% are music majors and also about 80% are traveling more than 100 miles to participate.

I've recently learned that a lot of corps are trying to build up larger staffs so that people don't have to spend the entire summer on the road with the corps. A lot of these guys are still in college/have regular jobs/have families, so it gets harder to commit to a 2-and-a-half-month road trip.

Wow...that is a LOT of people. Wonder how they all fit into the program?

This is correct. The parking lot incident really was just bad timing.

"Hey guys, are bagpipes illegal?" - Posted by TotallyNotGeorgeHopkins

Andy Grindle, mellophone tech since 2012, is returning again.

As already pointed out, I totally missed Cavies, which makes me ashamed because I know some people over there (forgive me!) REVISION 1.0: 1. BD (They tend to mount quick comebacks) 2. SCV/Blooooo 3. Blooooo/SCV 4. Crown 5. Boston 6. Cavaliers 7. Cadets 8. Phantom 9. BK 10. The Academy 11. Troopers (homer alert) 12. Crossmen I just want them all to win and be amazing. Is that too much to ask?

I'll resubmit one in 8 months when all the show information is coming together, but because I'm bored here's my off the cuff predictions following this year: 1. BD (They tend to mount quick comebacks) 2. SCV/Blooooo 3. Blooooo/SCV 4. Crown 5. Boston 6. Cadets 7. Phantom 8. BK 9. The Academy 10. Crossmen 11. Troopers (homer alert) 12. Blue Devils B (it's going to happen one of these years)

Troopers just announced their new caption heads for 2017: http://www.troopersdrumcorps.org/news Lauren Teel - Percussion Anthony Cruddas - Brass Pat Miller - Visual (co-caption head) Todd Clevenger - Visual (co-caption head) Susan Hanggi - Color Guard

The thought I just had was "I wonder how many people will be caught cheating on their girl/boyfriends with their tour hookups on national television." There's a lot of crap that goes on with 150 minimally supervised young adults that is probably best left untelevised...

Michael Terry was one of my brass staff members at Troopers before he returned to the Cadets. The guy very literally grew up in drum corps (spent years on the road with corps as a kid before marching 7 years as a cadets member). He is an amazing teacher and I can't wait to see what he does!

- broken link -

The Couchmen made a flowchart on their website of all the changes. It's actually really nice: http://www.couchmendrumcorps.org/dcistaffchanges

Some insiders with the Troopers have confirmed that Tim Snyder did NOT resign due to the LOS incident. A news report from Indy also confirmed that the security guard in question is "no longer with the company."

Soprano, Star 1993.

Holy thread resurrection, Batman!

Oh there's still partying. Most of the busses are left solely to the members with no staff supervision during those long drives. It's usually when the drinking occurs during a free day or after a show in public and someone catches wind of an underaged member who was involved. Drugs are another issue, as most members these days aren't cool with hard drugs and will report those.

Truth. Most if not all corps have an "everyone MUST shower before putting on the uniform" rule. That doesn't prevent you from sweating buckets during the performance though.

Sad :( wishing him the best of luck in whatever comes next.

That's actually the only reason for the wall, they just needed to make it sound like a bigger problem.

Here we go again... Obviously this activity is still appealing to someone, or else DCI wouldn't be posting higher attendance numbers at finals every year. Very few shows came off to me as being overly esoteric this season. BK's was maybe the biggest one. And Blue Stars, I honestly never really got that one.

Tim Snyder officially announced his resignation from Troopers via Facebook :(