SCV 1989 over age members

[snare36]

Imagine being the snare drummer that would have marched in that guy's place. What a terrible disappointment to find out that the guy who got the spot you wanted so bad was a fraud.

[84BDsop]

Imagine being the snare drummer that would have marched in that guy's place. What a terrible disappointment to find out that the guy who got the spot you wanted so bad was a fraud.

And probably cost you a ring!

25 years old sounds about right, from what I remember of the DCUK rule change that allowed me to march there in 86.

[tgk2779]

About the Crossmen thing. From what I have been told MANY MANY corps marched overage members in the 70's. And they finally caught some corps. And now you won't find any overage members anymore. That the corps admin knows about anyway. Again, from what I have been told, the age rule just wasn't really enforced until the late 70's. I obviously don't know from experience, since I wasn't even a year old at the time of the SCV incident that is the topic of this thread. Lol

I am old enough to confess as someone who marched during the formative years of DCI. This discussion reminds me of two memories of that time. There was a total paranoia of overage people in EVERY corps after 3-years of consecutive overage disqualifications.

1) Folklore at the time was that I think (3) UNDER-AGE people jumped to all thre corps between 75-77 and were members of Disqualified corps in (3) consecutive years. Can anyone confirm and pass along my condolences to them over the absurdity at the time?

2) I joined the 27th Lancers at the ripe old age of (14) before the 1973 season. (Do the math!) I aged-out SEVEN years later, something I proudly hold as a rare case in DCI. The Paranoia amongst corps in the 70's about the possibility of overage members was SO great, that I was targeted while leaving the field while "passing in review" on more than one occasion.

The Lancers had a policy of NO long hair and NO facial hair other than a mustache. It was always kept through the corps history as a "Clean Look". After already marching (4) years by the time I had graduated High School, I had apparantly become a familiar face to rival directors. By the time I was nineteen in 1977, I was instructed by George B. to carry my driver's license in my uniform pocket because I was being targeted by DCI Directors.

In my last 3-seasons of marching, I think I was pulled aside while leaving the field at least a half-dozen times to face George B, Don Pesceone, and some rival Director (that we were beating at the time) looking to confirm my age. (I'll pass on naming the corps who challenged my age due to respect, but given this thread's topic, Gail Royer was NEVER one of them.) Laughing now, (1) corps director challenged my age in Three consecutive years!

Twenty-five years later, George B. (re)introduced me to Don Pesceone as his Corps Manager during our incredible "Once More In '94" Alumni Corps year. Don looked at me and I said; "Remember me? I used to be the 19-year old OVERAGE Guy! We all laughed out loud as Don quielty remembered our personal history!

Overage is Cheating... whether cheating your competition... or in SCV's case, cheating your own organization!

I am truly sorry for wasting all of DCI's time back when I was a kid for having an "old man's face"

Now that I truly am an old man and no longer held to the 2-7 standards, I proudly wear a Salt & Pepper goatee!

[CrunchyTenor]

I remember being asked if I wanted to march in 1977 at 23. Could it have been an opportunity to reclaim the age-out year I didn't march? Maybe. Did I march? Absolutely NOT!

Garry in Vegas

[Northern Thunder]

In my Drum Corps World column I have cited examples of MANY junior corps in the 1960s that were verified to have marched members who were in their 30s.

[idontwan2know]

Thanks for the info. Of course, we are assuming the corps management in the 70's knew of their overage members. I wonder if the incidents the occurred during the seventies involved members presenting false documents? Either the members did not present documents, presented accurate documents, or presented false documents. In the first two, the management would surely have been guilty. In the latter, I'm not so sure. It is possible that falsified documents were presented and the management knew they were false.

There were some pretty obvious examples of "willful ignorance" in the 70's.

It's one thing when you have a member here or there forging documents. It's a whole other when a corps has upwards of 20 very mature looking members with birth certificates all notarized by the same person despite being born in different hospitals, towns, states, years, etc.

It's my understanding that most of the disqualifications were as a result of other corps reporting the offenders...it's hard to imagine that some other corps management knew about it and the offending corps didn't.

Regardless, the issue was such a problem in the 70s that DCI needed to take a hard line approach to force the corps to mend their ways. By the time 1989 rolled around, it was a different set of circumstances. Even so, if the members in question had marched in quarterfinals, I daresay SCV probably would have been disqualified.

[DAvery]

There were some pretty obvious examples of "willful ignorance" in the 70's.

It's one thing when you have a member here or there forging documents. It's a whole other when a corps has upwards of 20 very mature looking members with birth certificates all notarized by the same person despite being born in different hospitals, towns, states, years, etc.

It's my understanding that most of the disqualifications were as a result of other corps reporting the offenders...it's hard to imagine that some other corps management knew about it and the offending corps didn't.

Regardless, the issue was such a problem in the 70s that DCI needed to take a hard line approach to force the corps to mend their ways. By the time 1989 rolled around, it was a different set of circumstances. Even so, if the members in question had marched in quarterfinals, I daresay SCV probably would have been disqualified.

I don't really know about how the issue is now. But about 20 years ago I had a 23 year old guard instructor take a few students to audition for a top 12 corps. The students made it and the director ask the instructor if she wanted to march. The director told her not to worry about the age thing, they would work it out. She ended up not marching. I knew these things happened in the 70's, but never suspected they were still happening well into the 90's.

[kerickson]

SCV had two members who were kicked out at the end of the season. Both were overage guys from the UK who had aged out with the Dagenham Crusaders and came to SCV with false birth certificates and false passports.

Here's a scan of the Drum Corps World article dated August 31, 1989 which is titled "SCV not penalized for overage members".

This article verifies that they did indeed have falsified passports and had allegedly committed an international felony by entering the U.S. with false documents. I suppose today they'd be in a lot more trouble. It also explains why SCV was not penalized by DCI.

There are some things that have happened in my life that I remember in great detail. The experience of being in SCV is definitely one of them.

One of the overage guys was a snare player who I'm certain was kicked out when we were at our housing sight for the Centerville, Ohio show. The above article says GR was notified on August 8 about the first guy (the snare). Since we were presumably already at our housing site for the "Dayton" show, I'm sure my memory is correct about where we were when we found out. The website corpsreps.com identifies that as Dayton, but I’m pretty sure it was Centerville, Ohio for the housing. The actual show there was on August 10 – eight days before Nats.

I remember the Cadets of Bergen County were staying at the same school as us that day. When we walked out of the gym to head to our practice field, the Cadets’ pit section was just outside the gym playing the “Bring Him Home” intro. I remember thinking “OMG. That is going to make the most awesome ballad.” I found out later it was actually the beginning of their closer. (I was kinda excited and anticipating seeing the Cadet’s Les Mis show. Many of us SCV peeps really loved the music from Les Mis. I had bought the Broadway Cast CD and loved every second of it. We had actually done “8s & 8s” in the early season to the confrontation scene between Valjean and Javier - as part of Dan Dilullo’s system of getting us to march differently and interpreting the emotion of each piece. )

The corps was in such a laser beam focussed state at this point. There was not much time to think about the missing snare. SCV’s rehearsals at the time were VERY planned, aggressively paced and had practically no “down time” - so there wasn’t much time to think about anything extraneous. And we were being pushed and pushed by the staff and ourselves to keep up the momentum we had already established. (This was a position they had been in many times before and weren’t about to let us drop the intensity during the “home stretch”.)

I do remember that the freshly booted snare’s girlfriend (who was in the colorguard) was crying right before the beginning of rehearsal when she found out – and I think that’s the exact moment that the rest of us found out. I don’t believe there was any kind of official announcement made that day. If there was, I don’t remember one. And this ripple that went around as we all figured out what was going on appeared to make the other overage guy (who was a frenchhorn) kinda defensive and nervous. After a particular reset during rehearsal, somebody had apparently said something under their breath about HIM being a suspect now and he blurted out “And you know it’s not f------- true!” – glaring at all of us. I was pretty near him when that happened, and I remember thinking “OK. He at least knew that Mark was a fraud. Because now he’s acting guilty himself.” But the rehearsals flew by at the normal SCV pace and you just did what you were trained to do. Rise above it and focus on your own job.

The snareline had time to adjust their drill and close in that hole. Just how noticeable the adjustment was during finals has been the object of much commentary on DCP. I personally feel that taking into consideration how close it was to Championships, they did a pretty good job (considering how drilled into your head set points were at that point in the season).

The visible hole in the drill was from the aforementioned frenchhorn player who was kicked out after we were already at our housing sight in Kansas City. It was too late for us to do anything about that one. Someone recently posted a video of the Quarters performance on Facebook – so that helped jog my memory that we marched that hole for all three shows – Quarters, Semis & Finals. (I’d always known it was visible in the Semis video I have.)

I said before that I’m not 100% sure how we found out about Mark, the snare or who told us about him. But I'll never forget finals week in 89 when GR called us all together outside the school to tell us about a second British guy having just been kicked out for lying about his age. It was probably the maddest I ever saw GR in the two years I was a member of SCV when he was telling us. His face turned blood red and his face kinda quivered a little. The guy acually had tears whelling up in his eyes. But it was kinda like tears of rage (which is impossible to forget). You have to undersatand how much we all loved GR. In that moment, I think every one of us would have found that guy and beat him to a pulp JUST FOR GAIL. JUST FOR HURTING GAIL SO DEEPLY. Nevermind what he'd just done to us. (We'd worry about that some other time.) You could really feel how betrayed Gail felt. These guys were willing to forge documents and jeopardize an entire SCV season (and what looked like a pretty good shot at the title). But I think we understood that we still had a job to do. It was like Gail was mad enough for all of us, so we didn't need to get mixed up in it.

I was about to type "I guess I’ve blocked it out, because I can’t remember his name". But as I was replaying this whole thing in my mind over and over... the name Kevin keeps coming up. So maybe his name was Kevin.

Gail told us he had told the guy to start walking because he didn’t want to be at the school when we were informed of his betrayal. We were told that he had left all of his belongings in the gym and walked down the road. To my knowledge he was never mentioned again to the corps. I have no idea what happened to his suitcase etc., or if the police came to investigate or claim his things. We just turned our eyes on the target ahead and hoped for the best.

Looking back: To say that we dodged a potential bullet by those two being discovered by DCI BEFORE we competed in Kansas, City is probably a huge understatement. I am very grateful for the timing of the whole thing. I also know that I can wear my ring proudly (as Gail requested of us) without the win having been polluted by those two selfish A-holes being a part of our performance. The SCV uniform has never been so disrespected as it was in 1989... in my opinion.

The current Corps Director of the new Dallas, TX "DCA Finalist & High Percussion" corps The Vigilantes – Roger Treacher - is a former member of The Dagenham Crusaders. I’m friends with him (I consulted some this season with The Vigilantes. And we e-mail pretty regularly.) I could probably pick his brain and see if he has any further information on either of these two guys. Since he posts on here from time to time, maybe he’ll chime in.

The August 15 date mentioned in the above article for DCI notifying the corps about the second guy (the frenchhorn) also correlates with my memory of us already being at our finals week housing sight in a suburb of Kansas City.

One final note. The above article also contains the sentence "According to a DCI spokesperson, rumers of a third member marching illegally are not true." …in case anyone is confused about the number of members who were kicked out of the Santa Clara Vanguard during the 1989 season for being over-age -

Brad's account is very accurate - good memory!!! We were definitely in Ohio when we were told. I recall Ralph coming to us and explaining what had happened. We all liked Mark and were sort of dumbfounded by the whole thing. The one thing that stands out vividly is that, while there was obvious disappointment, there were no blatantly hostile feelings expressed by the staff or my fellow drumline members. Like I said, everbody liked the guy! I remember hearing that it was a former girlfriend in the UK that tipped off DCI.

"Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned..."

The french horn player was indeed named Kevin. The corps and staff were definitely irate at this point, being that the honorable thing to do would have been to fess up when his buddy was discovered a week earlier. We also had 1 or 2 more hornline members, of age, from the UK that year. I seem to remember a sop or french horn player named Lee.

So long ago, but also seems like yesterday

[bradrick]

I have to correct something I said in my previous post (although it is slightly off topic.. I guess).

I hung out with Roger Treacher - current Corps Director of the new Dallas, TX "DCA Finalist & High Percussion" corps The Vigilantes - and a couple of the other super cool staff members of The Vigilantes corps last night at Oktoberfest here in Addision, TX.

He is NOT a former member of the Dagenham, Crusaders as I previously stated. He marched in one of their competitor corps. But I can't remember which one he said he was in last night. (Did I mention I was at Oktoberfest? Good Times!!!!)

He also mentioned having seen The Madison Scouts during their summer trip "across the pond" in 1988. He claims to have been very moved by that experience. (I saw them on the other side of the pond in 88 and they were indeed a raging inferno. )

[randomnoise]

Fantastic info, Brad. Very insightful. What a strange thing to do at the age of 25. I believe they were 25. Saying goodbye to drum corps when I aged out was rather hard and I remember watching the 1999 corps with such longing. But to do such a thing to march again is vary peculiar.

Hi Spike!

Not sure what their ages were, but I seem to recall that they changed their birth year from 1966 to 1969. Of course, this could just be a guess on my part.