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Injured Crown Member


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

Umm, they can't be watching him the whole time. During fast drill, not everyone will have the same reaction time, is the main point, and collisions would occur across the entire corps, for example, if the Crown DM had issued a notional stop-show motion in the middle of the company-front collapse move that followed the injury, which is about as soon as he could have realized what happened.

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

Ok...speaking as someone who was on the podium for 2 years AND as someone who DID stop his corps during a run....allow me to educate you on a few things.

1) Not everyone watches the DM...they have other responsibilities like watching their drill. Everyone must watch for a cutoff or a tempo change, but mostly they're looking elsewhere. The center snare probably has the most eyes on the DM.

2) They may not be able to see the DM because of horn bells (or entire bodies for a contra/tuba) in their line of sight. The only brass that has a view without a bell getting in the way are sopranos/trumpets.

4) The collision I stopped was during a practice run....no audience noise, the corps had been at a standstill, and the incident was directly in front of me. I also HAPPENED to be looking right at the people involved. Had I turned my head at all, I would've missed it, and one of our sops would've gotten run over by a contra...who was going backwards and didn't see that the slop had forgotten to step off...and even THEN it wasn't an immediate halt...the contra stopped barely short of the sop, even though I was in his line of sight, was waving my arms like a maniac in a pattern that was clearly NOT my conducting patter, and screaming my ling out to cut.

Stopping a corps during a run isn't like flipping a light switch....not for 20-odd horns like I was dealing with, or 70+.

5) DMs don't see everything on the field. It's often said we have the best seat in the house, but I never found that to be the case...I could only really see clearly what was right in front of me....certainly not at the extremities of a company front where someone that fell would be hidden from my view by the rest of the line coming forward.

The best thing Ryan could do was to get out of the way and not cause a pileup of OTHER people who could injure themselves and further injure him. NO ONE HERE can speak to the wisdom of trying to walk on a broken leg....NO ONE HERE knows what pain he did or did NOT feel...NO ONE HERE knows how the adrenaline in his body affected those feelings. Even people who have been shot may not realize it right away. Lee Rudnicki mentions this in the story where he got shot at years ago.

This is not a sport where we expect to see such traumatic injuries. Thus, you can't plan for it like it's a daily happening. Twisted/sprained ankles, yes...catching a rifle with your face, yes...but this isn't the NFL, it ain't full-contact drum corps

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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.

With drill from our era yes.....but with modern drill? No way....especially if they're going at speed.

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It's always a good idea to always review all policies, and I'm sure that is being done. As for someone dying in 2005, am I getting senile or did I miss that press release?

It was DCA 05 prelims, Mike. Joel "Lothar" Magnusson (sp?), a mello from the Kilties....massive heart attack right there in the field during the show.

Ryan's injury is the worst I've ever heard of in the Jr ranks during any show. There have been other incidents talked about -- tenor from Magic doing an inadvertent back flip, any number of slip & falls, and of course, the Whitewater Wipeout -- but a broken bone tops the list.

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I understand the idea of getting off the field before you cause more problems and get others hurt. It makes sense until the corp member simply can't get off the field. Then what? If the corp member CAN'T get off the field then others will get hurt including the injured corp member if nothing can be done. What happens if the person passes out? Nobody goes out there to protect the corp member or the other marchers? Why is it wrong to think about this possibility and try and figure out a plan?

I'm sure DCI and the corps staff have thought about these things and will definitely be thinking more about them. It's not "wrong" as you say to think about it, but it is going too far to suggest that DCI has plans and specialized staff for every possible eventuality. This event would have been a lot different if the guy had just passed out, or if he had just fallen and not broken anything and gotten back in line, or if he had been in the middle of the line, or if it was a guard member or a drummer or a contra player or the drum major or an audience member. You can't plan for all of that.

What needs to happen depends on what happened to the member, where they are on the field, what else is going on, etc. You can't have different plans for each possible variation--you would miss most possibilities and it would be impossible to remember anyway. The most important thing is for there to be people around who are paying attention and react quickly. And that's what happened! The poor guy collapsed mostly out of the way of the drill, and people ran out very quickly to help and got him off the field. What would you suggest should have been done differently, other than stopping the show, which I really think would have been a riskier move.

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For those saying they shouldve stopped the show... firstly, that could have risked more injury. Secondly, by the time that message had made its way from the one end to the other (its not like staff were on scaffolding and see it and yell down to the DM to cut the rep like in a rehearsal), with how little was left in the show, the show mightve been over anyways.

There's no 100% good call in that situation. You make a split second call and do the best you can. Not something we need to make a controversy about. This was a freak occurrence for something like this to happen in a show. If some reports are accurate that he already had stress fractures before the incident (and its likely he did, just by how it broke), and this was known, you could have prevented it by not allowing him to march with that injury, but i think we all know that there are a lot of people every season that push through injury just to finish the season. They do what they can to prevent making it worse, but obviously (as in this case) that doesnt always work out.

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Just to clear up some confusion about what happened in the immediate aftermath of Ryan's injury, here's Stan's account of what happened:

"Managed to break my right ankle trying to help Ryan off the field after he suffered a fracture going down during finals.

More about having a view than anything else. Jim, Maggie & another woman were dragging him off the field. I was watching the far side when I saw them go, went to help & tripped when Jim's weight shifted. Got back up and was breathing with Ryan to keep him from hyper ventilating. Gathered stuff and was walking off, field crew and a DCI board member insisted I get checked out. Doc recommended hospital.

And the kicker is I wasn't going on the field. Megh gave me a pass as I was getting off the bus and they were on when I got to the end of the tunnel so I guess I was supposed to be there."

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

It might be different now, but what I recall is that very few folks watched the DM, other than cut offs.

This is because of how spread out everyone was.....so if person A on the back hash and person B is on the front hash and we both look at the DM and try to come in together....the person in back will sound later from the stands.....sound travels slower than light. What we were taught to do is to listen back....and the group in the back (sometimes the drum line and sometimes a section of horns) would watch the DM. This is part of what would be worked out in ensemble rehearsal....where each member is getting their timing from during each part of the show.

All that being said, I wish speedy recoveries to by Ryan and Mr. Olochwoszcz.

Peace,

CuriousMe

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I'm sure DCI and the corps staff have thought about these things and will definitely be thinking more about them. It's not "wrong" as you say to think about it, but it is going too far to suggest that DCI has plans and specialized staff for every possible eventuality. This event would have been a lot different if the guy had just passed out, or if he had just fallen and not broken anything and gotten back in line, or if he had been in the middle of the line, or if it was a guard member or a drummer or a contra player or the drum major or an audience member. You can't plan for all of that.

What needs to happen depends on what happened to the member, where they are on the field, what else is going on, etc. You can't have different plans for each possible variation--you would miss most possibilities and it would be impossible to remember anyway. The most important thing is for there to be people around who are paying attention and react quickly. And that's what happened! The poor guy collapsed mostly out of the way of the drill, and people ran out very quickly to help and got him off the field. What would you suggest should have been done differently, other than stopping the show, which I really think would have been a riskier move.

This is what kids were taught in my Div. II/III experience.

1. If you can pop back up quickly...then do that.

2. If not, wait until traffic clears and then roll out of the way. Rolling usually will not result in further injury and will get you out of the way.

Now, in the example from Saturday night. The company front made it tough to roll, but the member ended up behind the front. The issue came when he tried to pop up. Even though he was not in danger of harming other corps members, it was just painful and distracting for the audience. I kept saying to myself...just go back down and roll.

The first two staff members were not going to be physically able to get him up and off the field. Finally, a staff member came to carry him (improvised fireman carry) off the field.

I believe the member could have rolled off the field better/faster.

Good luck to him. I hope he is able to recover some use of the leg and that there is no serious nerve damage. What a tough thing to happen on the last performance of the year.

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