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Just observing some open class corps thus far, it seems they are suffering the most from lack of membership in comparison to pre covid membership.  The top five probably are in better shape in that respect.  BDB and SCVC along with Gold are probably in the best shape with fuller corps.  Spartans looked good, not sure about Legends or Lousiana Stars and Southwind.  I guess it's to be expected.  I always look forward to Open Class for some great surprises.

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Definitely so, I think it's a normal occurrence that the smaller teaching corps probably shrink more than the larger destination corps during economic upheaval.  Covid was different than a regular recession  but probably similar effects. My wife is support staff for 7r, they are definitely a little corps this year. Partly, I think they also purposely kept it small and manageable and look to growing again in the future.  

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Well. Membership was down across the board this year. And those outside the World Class top 6 were still trying to fill holes as late as last week.
 

Could happen to be that many families were out of work the last few years, and the cost of the activity is now equal to (or in many cases more than) a used car.  The cost issues were never fully figured out by corps admin. So they just pass those costs back onto the consumer. 
 

For comparison it is now is more cost effective to spend your summer living in Spain, and taking lessons from pros there than it is to do drum corps. It’s more cost effective to do the Jazz at Lincoln Center youth summer with Wynton (which isn’t affordable for most students in jazz) than it is to do drum corps. 

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

Southwind is marching 78 this season. Down a bit from previous seasons, but they're carrying a good balance and a great sound with them.

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Great start Southwind. No idea what the show is about. Not much out there as far as that’s concerned. Some picks of what I can assume is the uniform.  Come on!!!! I’m a fan and maybe it’ll make sense when I see it in Indy.

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On 7/4/2022 at 2:27 PM, mjyaub said:

Just observing some open class corps thus far, it seems they are suffering the most from lack of membership in comparison to pre covid membership.  The top five probably are in better shape in that respect.  BDB and SCVC along with Gold are probably in the best shape with fuller corps.  Spartans looked good, not sure about Legends or Lousiana Stars and Southwind.  I guess it's to be expected.  I always look forward to Open Class for some great surprises.

Here in Utah, The Battalion is fielding a notably reduced number this year, primarily due to out of control fuel costs for travel.  As a very young corps organization still, and Utahns being infamously stingy about supporting such things, they don't have the resource pool the big 3 Cali Open Class corps have (SCVS, BDB, Gold).  And it exploded even further thru the Spring as Putin's mad war of brutality skyrocketed oil prices around the planet.  Here in Utah we are tied or in 1st place for the worst gas prices in the country, even though we have 5 refineries in greater Salt Lake City.

So the decision was made before opening camps to pare down the corps size.

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