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Injured Crown Member


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I could be misinterpreting CMFC4Ever's reply, but my take on it was that it wasn't about avoiding more injury to that particular individual -- yes, that is important, and in a perfect world, if it were possible to stay put and avoid injuring the leg further, then yes, that would have been the best thing to do -- but the prospect of more corps members being injured by falling over the injured corps member who was not able to get out of their way quickly enough. That second scenario also includes the prospect of that original corps member being injured even more too, due to people falling on him. None of these are great alternatives, but if it's a choice between one person being injured or multiple people, then I think the choice is obvious.

You were correct in your reading of my post. An injury was bad, but leaving him there to possibly get hurt more AND to allow other people to possibly get hurt is worse.

The third alternative would be to stop the show so no one gets hurt. Don't see a problem in doing this/

It would have been impossible to stop the show for the reasons byline states below.

Good point, and I agree with this. However, I see a practical problem here. Drum corps is noisy, and in performance the corps members are in full concentration. How do you get a corps to stop quickly in the midst of its performance, especially when the members are not expecting that (as they might in rehearsal)? The way I see it, by the time you get everyone stopped, the damage might have already been done (people already falling over the fallen corps member, etc.).

The scary thing is to try to imagine this fall happening at some other point in Crown's show. As these things go, the fall happened in a relatively fortuitous place where at least there was less chance of other corps members falling.

I don't think it was a place where there was less chance of other corps members falling. It was more that he was just lucky that his dot at that point in the drill had him on the far end of Side 2. Had he been in the mess in the middle when he fell, this situation would've been a lot worse. IIRC, this happened in that really complicated drill on the isolated hits where the corps is running their ###3$ off towards the middle with gates and all kinds of amazing craziness.

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I don't think it was a place where there was less chance of other corps members falling. It was more that he was just lucky that his dot at that point in the drill had him on the far end of Side 2. Had he been in the mess in the middle when he fell, this situation would've been a lot worse. IIRC, this happened in that really complicated drill on the isolated hits where the corps is running their ###3$ off towards the middle with gates and all kinds of amazing craziness.

From what I can see, the corps creates the "crown" picture, then gates into two blocks, then gates again into the company front. As the company front is forming, that's where the corps member falls, then tries to get up and falls again (heart-wrenching to watch) as the corps moves forward. The reason it's fortuitous (relatively speaking) is that during this time, the corps member is at the back of one of the gates and so is actually behind the rest of the horn line when he falls, and then he stays behind the horn line. If it had happened even a few seconds earlier, as you note, it could have been so much worse.

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Best of luck to Ryan! Hopefully he will recover quickly and in time for next season!

Couple of comments:

As for a member potentially injuring themselves further by trying to move - things are pretty fluid during the show - heart rate and adrenaline are super high and when you fall you don't really have time to sit there and assess the situation. I wouldn't be surprised if he didn't even realize his leg was broken. He did what members are instructed to do which is in the event of a fall, get out of the way to prevent further injuries.

From everything I've heard, things happened relatively quickly. For people who didn't see the fall directly, they probably assumed it was just a fall and the member would recover. It would have taken a few moments to realize the seriousness of the situation. It doesn't sound like there was an unreasonable amount of time before someone went to help. So I wouldn't fault DCI or the Crown staff for the handling of the situation.

Someone mentioned that they should have stopped the show. I think if the DM had recognized the seriousness of the problem, the best decision (in hindsight) would have been to stop the show. I don't think there's much risk in doing that. Everyone should be watching the DM and if he gives the cutoff signal in the middle of the show, everyone should know immediately. I was performing once where this happened because of the threat of lightning. Everyone stopped at the cutoff and we cleared the field and no one was hurt.

Debilitating injuries during a show are extremely rare so there are no real procedures for that. I bet that will change. I would guess that the procedure from now on would be that the DM will be instructed to stop the show if there is an injury on the field.

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The third alternative would be to stop the show so no one gets hurt. Don't see a problem in doing this/

WHAT ?

Just who would stop it ? How many of the 150 would all stop at the same time ? How many people coud get hurt because just a portion of people stopped but te rest kept going ?

With the emotion of the finals performance and the members being in the "zone" this is like asking someone to stand in front of a freight train and order it to stop. During a practice ? maybe so but until this is looked at with plans in mind ( a new signal to / from the DM that calls a "injury halt", this is flirting with disaster

Edited by The Other Mike
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Thanks for the added insight, Bart. You make some excellent points.

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WHAT ?

Just who would stop it ? How many of the 150 would all stop at the same time ? How many people coud get hurt because just a portion of people stopped but te rest kept going ?

That little guy who waves his arms on the podium. The one everyone should be watching anyways.

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I don't think it was a place where there was less chance of other corps members falling. It was more that he was just lucky that his dot at that point in the drill had him on the far end of Side 2. Had he been in the mess in the middle when he fell, this situation would've been a lot worse. IIRC, this happened in that really complicated drill on the isolated hits where the corps is running their ###3$ off towards the middle with gates and all kinds of amazing craziness.

One clarification: It was side #1. (Facing the field, left of the 50)

While fortunate to be at the end out on the 15 -20 yard line, the member did his best to emerge from the line and try to get off the field. Unfortunately, there was only one person on the sideline as it was happening, a woman in black dress (I assumed an instructor) who could come to his aid. She did as quickly as she could, but as the member tried to limp to her, it was apparent to everyone in the stadium that his leg was broken badly. The woman tried to help but appeared too weak to hold his full weight on her shoulder and help him off the field, and I suspect he was in significant enough pain that he was limited in movement. Eventually someone else came out to help them both off the field.

I doubt very much any other the members knew there was an injured member other that the few around him, let alone the severity as it was happening. How many of us have seen people go down during a performance? An SCV horn player fell earlier in the night and he got up and back in position quickly.

There was also a noticably warmer applause for Crown at the conclusion of the performance in part yes, for their outstanding season, but also I felt IMO for the young man and the courage he showed during his injury.

I read that he is doing well, and like others would be glad to contribute to his 2011 season. In no small way, his efforts were the embodiment of how hard drum corps kids are willing to work for this activity and the obstacles they overcome. Just for him, they were more serious than any I have ever witnessed and on our largest stage. I wish him a quick and full recovery.

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Difficult, not impossible

But highly likely to cause further injury to more members. If the guy fell in the middle of the corps, then there would be a good reason to stop. (Although if he were in the middle of the corps, the resulting trainwreck would happen way too fast for anyone to react in time) Since he was outside of the drill, letting the corps continue while staff helped him off the field was the safest way to proceed.

Something that was mentioned earlier in the thread that was concerning:

I've read that He had been having troubles and nursing a previous injury throughout the season and could barely walk this week at times."

If this is accurate, should this member have even been on the field in the first place? With the continued increase in athletic demand placed on the performing members, has corps staff expanded to include those with adequate medical expertise to deal with athletic injuries?

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Best of luck to Ryan! Hopefully he will recover quickly and in time for next season!

Couple of comments:

As for a member potentially injuring themselves further by trying to move - things are pretty fluid during the show - heart rate and adrenaline are super high and when you fall you don't really have time to sit there and assess the situation. I wouldn't be surprised if he didn't even realize his leg was broken. He did what members are instructed to do which is in the event of a fall, get out of the way to prevent further injuries.

From everything I've heard, things happened relatively quickly. For people who didn't see the fall directly, they probably assumed it was just a fall and the member would recover. It would have taken a few moments to realize the seriousness of the situation. It doesn't sound like there was an unreasonable amount of time before someone went to help. So I wouldn't fault DCI or the Crown staff for the handling of the situation.

Someone mentioned that they should have stopped the show. I think if the DM had recognized the seriousness of the problem, the best decision (in hindsight) would have been to stop the show. I don't think there's much risk in doing that. Everyone should be watching the DM and if he gives the cutoff signal in the middle of the show, everyone should know immediately. I was performing once where this happened because of the threat of lightning. Everyone stopped at the cutoff and we cleared the field and no one was hurt.

Debilitating injuries during a show are extremely rare so there are no real procedures for that. I bet that will change. I would guess that the procedure from now on would be that the DM will be instructed to stop the show if there is an injury on the field.

In ther past I have observed DMs being instructed to stop movement (the show) if a member goes down. This is to prevent a bad situation from getting much worse. Of course, this is in no way intended to infer that Crown's DM did anything wrong. As a drum corps community, all organizations should now build this into their training how to accomplish this.

In addition, I agree with others that Bloo should have been held in the tunnel. Not for competitive issues, but for safety's sake. Having Bloo on the field just added to the situation and it wasn't ncessary. Let the EMS guys handle the situation and then proceed with brining the next corps on.

Given the situation I think all was handled okay, not great, but okay. Hopefully DCI will engage the leadership on what went well, what didn't, and make the appropriate modifications.

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