Does recruiting (sometimes predatory) help or hurt DCI?

[actucker]

Bluecoats drumline has 17 members. Where are you getting six from? Roger Carter teaches in California, and brought some of his students with him. There are at least 5 snare drummers from California, several of whom marched Pulse last year. There's a kid from Californai, a kid from North Carolina, and another from Conneticut on the quad line. Deleware Alabama and southern California are all represented on the bass line.

None of this is uncommon.

Keep in mind, driving distance away from Ohio is as far as Atlanta, or Raleigh these days. That's hardly the same region of the country. Ohio is driving distance from the Cadets. Are you saying that they're competing for members because kids might drive to either?

When was the last time you were at a drum corps audition. Do you really think Crown draws the talent they draw from just the southeast? What about Cadets percussion section last year? Do you really think they're all mid atlantic guys?

I'm sorry, but you're wrong. Drum corps membership, particularly at the world class level, is no longer regional. Sure, corps will draw from their home area, but nowhere near to the percentage that it used to.

As for the talent base declining, where is your evidence? I don't see it. What was the last corps to fold due to an inability to recruit members?

I agree, staff focus should be on education. Good thing it has been in every single instance I've experienced. Not once have I been to a staff meeting where "how do we win?" has been the main question. The question has always been "how do we help the kids get better?"

As for your examples of recruitment contributing to corps declining, I'd say there's very little evidence of causation. Bluecoats had been around for a long time when Glassmen faded. Glassmen's problems were financial, not member oriented. That's why they had to tell an entire drum corps full of members about their folding, not an empty room. Sure, members will shift from one corps to another. But suggesting that Glassmen's decline simply can't be backed up. I'd say the same to your example of Bridgemen and Lancers. Do you have any evidence that suggests causation or are these just events that happened at the same time?

[mcjordansc]

Corps do not get better because they take talent from other corps. There are so few drum corps competing these days that the talent pool is under no stress. Corps get better because they better managed, have better financials, have better staff and produce competitive show designs. The corps you mentioned that folded or fell down the standings struggled on some or all the areas mentioned.

[Jeff Ream]

Let's talk "recruiting" and whether this is helping or hurting the activity.

Consider some history first:

How much do you think that the story of the ascendency of the Garfield Cadets, and more recently, the Bluecoats and Crown, have to do with the bankruptcy of nearby corps?

I remember hearing that the Bayonne Bridgemen, who had one of the best drumlines in history in 1982, nearly collapsed before the 1983 season, and members of the drumline and hornline joined Garfield. Just as the Cadets began their three-year championship run, the Bridgemen were in collapse, a process that took from 1982-86, when they finally ceased operations.

The Crossmen also took a huge drop from 8th to 13th from 82 to 83, and I've heard that they lost a number of top members to the Cadets. De facto recruitment had to have happened there too. (I mean, didn't the Cadets 'recruit' their young corps director from the Crossmen?)

Notice how the Glassmen folding has hugely benefited the Bluecoats?

Orlando Magic's collapse and Spirit's decline in the 2000s (finishing 15th, 16th, 17th in 08, 09, and 10) directly coincided with the rise of Crown.

I'm not directly arguing that corps are predatory, but there are very few truly talented people out there who can spin, drum, and march at the highest level. Someone's or something's convincing top members to switch - staff, hype, better show design, musical program choice.

Geography helps, but what helps most is that if corps in a particular area have collapsed, leaving one or two standing.

Crown's rise has a lot to do with the fact that they are one of only two world class corps in all of the south, a region of 85 million.

Consider this: one comparatively tiny geographical area in the midwest (talking a 120 mile radius) has the Cavies, Phantom, Blue Stars, Colts, and Madison. The population in that area is about 13 million, one-sixth of the southern recruitment area of Crown and Spirit. The entire midwest's population, by the way, is 55 million.

It's almost unheard of that Phantom has an amazing year when the Cavaliers or Madison do the same. Recruiting waves explain a lot of it.

Best clear example of recruiting I can think of:

I had a friend who marched Madison in 1988 for his age-out year (had marched Cadets in '87), and he told me that they had a huge influx of talent that year because they announced early that they were going on a European tour. Voila! Ce n'est pas une coincidence. That's their only championship year. Giving incentives to join - like a month-long European trip - certainly is recruitment.

There is very little written about this on the forum, if anything.

Does this hurt or help the activity? I'm thinking it hurts - hard for corps to stabilize membership, and further consolidation puts corps out of reach of many, whose parents don't necessarily want their kids to commute 500 or 1000 miles to rehearse through the winter and early spring.

This activity has become very elite, and very elitist. Too many corps have folded to make DCI accessible and influential. Heck, I wouldn't ever have known about it had it not been for PBS in the 80s, back when there was at least one drum corps within 200 miles of 90% of the US population.

No more. While the level of performance has risen, as you'd expect with consolidation of talent in the hands of very few corps, DCI's real impact on the country has dramatically declined.

DCI's main fundraising effort should be focused on generating the cash necessary to have finals broadcast on every PBS station nationally every year. DCI in theaters, where you're preaching to the choir, is nothing, nothing at all, like national TV.

It's less about music education and more about competition for smaller and smaller crowds at fewer events (and no national audience on TV anymore, which is a tragedy.)

Corps have a disincentive to help a friend in need. They'd rather take the talent of the collapsing corps and raise their score next year. Yes, corps do a few one-off clinics, but not nearly enough of them, and those clinics are as much about recruitment as they are about education.

So, in reality, because everyone's so obsessed with competition, and because competition requires aggressive recruitment, growth becomes predatory. On the entire activity. Which means "growth" isn't growth at all, just consolidation and elitism, which results in evaporation of audiences and the disappearance of any truly national media.

We've consolidated and recruited ourselves into a nearly irrelevant ghetto.

how has Glassmen folding really helped Bloo? For years both were finalists, and sometime around the middle of the next decade Bloo, who seems to have 8-11 locked up switched placed with glassmen who occasionally knocked on the top 6 door step.

Crossmen had many ups and downs with Cadets next door. Yet in 82, Bridgemen, Crossmen and Cadets were all in the top 8.

it all comes down to making your corps a place people want to go, and having a staff that has continuity. Since the mid 90's Crossmen have had so many staff changes, even before the move to Texas, it's hard to remember who was where and when.Bridgement had a myriad of problems, many internal.

and with all of the South to themselves, why is Spirit not up there with Crown?

It's so much more than geography. Everyone keeps searching for that easy to figure out sexy/controversial issue as to how corps do what and why....well look, not that long ago, Crown, Sprit magic and Southwind had the south. Sprit was fighting their way back from death, Magic was in and out of finals, southwind kept knocking on the door but never got in...crown was usually in finals but not at the top. All were usually top 16 though.

So now, what 10 years later, just Crown and Spirit are left. Crown's a major player, and Spirit is usually in the bottom rung of finalists....did the map really help out? or did crown get their #### together as an organization, make the corps a place people wanted to be, and built on it?

[zigzigZAG]

What I'm arguing is pretty simple - members move around, are recruited, chase incentives or anniversaries or attractive staffs or programs.

I'm not saying that the Bluecoats caused Glassmen to collapse. I'm saying that Bloo benefited from it. Just like Cadets certainly did as 27th and Bridgemen were collapsing, exactly when Cadets moved to the top of the ladder through the 80s.

Lots of evidence for this out there - when's the last time Phantom and Cavies were both top 5? When the Cavies were at the top, Phantom was consistently second tier in the top 12. Cavies decline, Phantom rises, and vice versa for the most part.

And while we don't have the data, I'd bet my home that most members of any given corps are from that region. So more corps in a particular region make it harder to compete for members and resources.

And the number of top-tier MM's these days is undoubtedly fewer. Of course you've not heard of corps having a hard time finding members. Corps keep folding year after year. Glassmen, Kiwanis, Orlando, etc. in recent years. How many fewer corps do we have now than in the 70s? We've probably lost two-thirds of our corps. Probably an even higher percentage.

We used to have quarterfinals, cutting to a top 25. We're down to 23.

[DCfan48060]

I sat next to a person a couple years ago at a show who was STILL angry because she felt Star of Indiana "decimated" other mid-west corps in 1985 of members and staff. If Frozen had been out then I would have sung that Adele Dazeem song to her.

[Jeff Ream]

Bloo's highest placement was with Glassmen as a finalist. So again, how did Bloo benefit?

as for Phantom and Cavies look at 2011. The problem was Phantom inconsistency.....hit some homeruns 05-08, then 09 happened, then Cavies dropped in 2012...I'd say odds are you'd see those two in the top 5 together more than not.

why do we keep losing corps? Money. it's gotten expensive, and many places didn't run it as a business. Or, like glassmen, they effused to look beyond bingo

[Jeff Ream]

I sat next to a person a couple years ago at a show who was STILL angry because she felt Star of Indiana "decimated" other mid-west corps in 1985 of members and staff. If Frozen had been out then I would have sung that Adele Dazeem song to her.

funny thing was in 1985 the Cavies appeared in the top 5 for the first time in DCI history

[jjeffeory]

It's almost unheard of that Phantom has an amazing year when the Cavaliers or Madison do the same. Recruiting waves explain a lot of it.

It happened quite a bit actually. Like A LOT! I guess it depends on what you consider amazing... Any year that any of these corps are in the top 6 is an amazing year to me...

2002 Cavaliers 1st, Phantom 5th

2003 Cavaliers 2nd, Phantom 4th

2004 Cavaliers 1st, Phantom 5th

2005 Cavaliers 2nd, Phantom 3rd

2006 Cavaliers 1st, Phantom 2nd

2007 Cavaliers 3rd, Phantom 4th

2008 Phantom 1st, Cavaliers 3rd

2010 Cavaliers 2nd, Phantom 6th

2011 Cavaliers 3rd, Phantom 5th

Okay, I just got tired of listing all the years. I could go back into the 80s and odds are two of those three corps ( or Star) would have amazing years in the same year.

Best clear example of recruiting I can think of:

I had a friend who marched Madison in 1988 for his age-out year (had marched Cadets in '87), and he told me that they had a huge influx of talent that year because they announced early that they were going on a European tour. Voila! Ce n'est pas une coincidence. That's their only championship year. Giving incentives to join - like a month-long European trip - certainly is recruitment.

I have friends who marched in Madison that year too, it wasn't only the members. They got quite a few 1 years staff people as well. However, that wasn't their only championship year.

Madison won in 1975 too.

There is very little written about this on the forum, if anything.

Does this hurt or help the activity? I'm thinking it hurts - hard for corps to stabilize membership, and further consolidation puts corps out of reach of many, whose parents don't necessarily want their kids to commute 500 or 1000 miles to rehearse through the winter and early spring.

This activity has become very elite, and very elitist. Too many corps have folded to make DCI accessible and influential. Heck, I wouldn't ever have known about it had it not been for PBS in the 80s, back when there was at least one drum corps within 200 miles of 90% of the US population.

We've consolidated and recruited ourselves into a nearly irrelevant ghetto.

We've talked about consolidation on here before, and we've talked about recruitment issues before too. Basically, corps get members from all the country, and from other countries because that's where the member wants to march. I marched with a corps that was further away than several other corps because I wanted to march the type of shows that THEY were producing over the types of shows that other corps were producing. So members are going to go where they want to go; that doesn't always mean they're going to the corps in their region.

I would guess that other people might march with a corps because they live closer to the winter camps, or maybe their parents tell them that they have to march in the local corps. I've seen that too, actually.

Edited June 27, 2014 by jjeffeory

[actucker]

What I'm arguing is pretty simple - members move around, are recruited, chase incentives or anniversaries or attractive staffs or programs.

I'm not saying that the Bluecoats caused Glassmen to collapse. I'm saying that Bloo benefited from it. Just like Cadets certainly did as 27th and Bridgemen were collapsing, exactly when Cadets moved to the top of the ladder through the 80s.

Lots of evidence for this out there - when's the last time Phantom and Cavies were both top 5? When the Cavies were at the top, Phantom was consistently second tier in the top 12. Cavies decline, Phantom rises, and vice versa for the most part.

And while we don't have the data, I'd bet my home that most members of any given corps are from that region. So more corps in a particular region make it harder to compete for members and resources.

And the number of top-tier MM's these days is undoubtedly fewer. Of course you've not heard of corps having a hard time finding members. Corps keep folding year after year. Glassmen, Kiwanis, Orlando, etc. in recent years. How many fewer corps do we have now than in the 70s? We've probably lost two-thirds of our corps. Probably an even higher percentage.

We used to have quarterfinals, cutting to a top 25. We're down to 23.

Again, fewer member corps is not indicative of a lack of talent. Corps fold for a variety of reasons, but lack of membership is rarely one of them. Go to BOA finals or WGI finals. The talent pool is pretty extensive. If it weren't, there wouldn't be kids sitting at home right now wishing they could have made a corps this summer.

Bluecoats may have benefitted from when Glassmen folded slightly, but so did the rest of the DCI world. There were Glassmen marching all over the country when they folded. Colts and Cascades took in several members if I remember correctly. At the time, however, Bluecoats were regularly placing well ahead of Glassmen, so I think its unlikely that they got much of a boost. Perhaps a hole filled here or there.

I'd like to know what you qualify as regional. I've just given you a pretty clear cut example of how "not regional" drum corps is. It was the only one I knew for a fact off the top of my head. I can remember going to an audition in California several years ago and there were a bunch of guys from Boston there (Berkley College of Music guys). There were a fair number of Michigan guys. I was from the East coast. This isn't a new phenomenon.

[jjeffeory]

What I'm arguing is pretty simple - members move around, are recruited, chase incentives or anniversaries or attractive staffs or programs.

I'm not saying that the Bluecoats caused Glassmen to collapse. I'm saying that Bloo benefited from it. Just like Cadets certainly did as 27th and Bridgemen were collapsing, exactly when Cadets moved to the top of the ladder through the 80s.

Lots of evidence for this out there - when's the last time Phantom and Cavies were both top 5? When the Cavies were at the top, Phantom was consistently second tier in the top 12. Cavies decline, Phantom rises, and vice versa for the most part.

And while we don't have the data, I'd bet my home that most members of any given corps are from that region. So more corps in a particular region make it harder to compete for members and resources.

And the number of top-tier MM's these days is undoubtedly fewer. Of course you've not heard of corps having a hard time finding members. Corps keep folding year after year. Glassmen, Kiwanis, Orlando, etc. in recent years. How many fewer corps do we have now than in the 70s? We've probably lost two-thirds of our corps. Probably an even higher percentage.

We used to have quarterfinals, cutting to a top 25. We're down to 23.

I already addressed some wrong stuff you wrote above, and I don't disagree with everything you say, but you have to remember that the upper limited to corps sizes has gone from 128 to 135 to 150.

More people than ever are participating in the marching arts ( WGI, BOA, DCI).

The higher placing corps don't get their members from just 1 region. People have traveled to the corps that they liked for a very long time.

I know people who lived in GA, but traveled to march in Illinois. I know people who flew to West coast from East costs to march with their favorite corps. I know people who drove from Ohio to march with Cadets.

Edited June 27, 2014 by jjeffeory