Santa Clara Vanguard 2023 Announcement Thread

[MarimbaManiac]

16 minutes ago, seinphan said:

The health and strength of an organization isn't judged by its trophies (as anyone who marched from 2000-2017 will tell you).....

2000-2017, which includes several Rennick years. Glad to see he's included in the lexicon👍

Way to miss the entire point. Just say you're a Rennick apologist/fanboy and move on. 

[scheherazadesghost]

.

Edited June 13, 2023 by scheherazadesghost

[RiverCityAndTroopersFan]

11 hours ago, 84BDsop said:

WTF are you talking about?

I meant bluecoats sorry

Edited December 14, 2022 by RiverCityAndTroopersFan
Wrong corps

[IllianaLancerContra]

1 hour ago, scheherazadesghost said:

 

I can agree with you there. 5? Try every single one since GR passed. .

This may not be a popular post, but I would suggest that if GR didn't leave SCV in a healthy leadership/financial state that he is part of the problem as well.

Great leaders set it up for their successors to succeed.

[DFA1970]

11 minutes ago, RiverCityAndTroopersFan said:

I was wrong but https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Devils_Drum_and_Bugle_Corps#Show_summary_(1972–2022) 1972

Okay....but have no idea what you are referring too. But thanks for the visuals.

[LabMaster]

49 minutes ago, C.Holland said:

you have to look at all the programming and systems they need people to operate vs BAC.  and where revenue comes from.

Not sure what you mean. Please explain more. Thanks.

[Jeff Ream]

1 hour ago, 84BDsop said:

Great info....but too many won't care.

And a side note...if the corps owns their own fleet of busses and semi tractors, those costs are identical, especially on something like fuel, THE COSTS OF WHICH ARE OUT OF CONTROL OF THE CORPS.

But sure...keep focusing on elements that are almost non-issues from a percentage standpoint and ignore something like the above.

Oh I know people believe the misinformation. It’s a world at large issue

[2muchcoffeeman]

1 hour ago, MarimbaManiac said:

VMAPA decided to trade the intangible essence of the Vanguard and ties with the local community that supported it for 50 years for a few drum trophies.

Set aside percussion, which appears to be a handy whipping post in this thread. I'm more bemused by this idea that "ties with the local community" is central to the viability of any world-class drum corps organization, let alone VMAPA.

Local community? You mean, like the Garfield Bergen Allentown Cadets? Like the Allentown San Antonio Crossmen? Like The Boston Crusaders, which has the entire New England scholastic market to itself yet whose ranks are filled with Floridians? I mean, the last time the Troopers had a Wyoming-born member in their ranks, they issued a press release.

Is there a WC corps anywhere that operates today the way it did in 1958, taking bored kids off the hands of their exasperated parents and giving them something productive to do during the summer? How deep is the well of local membership in places like Rockford, or Canton, or Dubuque, or Madison -- to say nothing of places like Casper? Sure, the well is deepest in locales such as Northern California, Texas, and the Northeast. Yet even in those locales, the rosters of the corps based there tell a story of nationwide membership, and they've been telling that story for three decades. For better or worse, the era of competitively viable drum corps built on local kids went out with the VFW Nationals.

Every corps needs volunteers. And somehow, every WC corps seems to be able to obtain them, even those whose "local presence" is a storefront office and whose membership base comes from multiple time zones. No WC corps needs an army of locally based volunteers to operate.

And darn few of them have even a single cadet corps, let alone two. Even if the critique that the Rennicks poisoned SCV's relationship with its cadet programs is true {citation needed}, the result (no local feeder corps) is identical to just about every other perennial World Class finalist.

On balance, is a stronger presence in the community preferable to a weaker, or antagonistic one? Of course. Do good relations with music educators in your area make a difference? Certainly. Does it help to have a friendly advocate in your local school district? Boy howdy. Would any drum corps like to come home from Indy with a gold medal and 3 busfulls of local kids and roll down Main Street to a ticker-tape parade? I don't know, let's ask Don Warren.

Am I saying that local relationships don't matter? No; of course they do. The administrators of national enterprises live their lives locally, after all. But in this age of DCI, do "ties with the local community" make or break you? I'm dubious.

 

 

Edited December 14, 2022 by 2muchcoffeeman

[Jeff Ream]

1 minute ago, 2muchcoffeeman said:

Set aside percussion, which appears to be a handy whipping post in this thread. I'm more bemused by this idea that "ties with the local community" is central to the viability of any world-class drum corps organization, let alone VMAPA.

Local community? You mean, like the Garfield Bergen Allentown Cadets? Like the Allentown San Antonio Crossmen? Like The Boston Crusaders, which has the entire New England scholastic market to itself yet whose ranks are filled with Floridians? I mean, the last time the Troopers had a Wyoming-born member in their ranks, they issued a press release.

Is there a WC corps anywhere that operates today the way it did in 1958, taking bored kids off the hands of their exasperated parents and giving them something productive to do during the summer? How deep is the well of local membership in places like Rockford, or Canton, or Dubuque, or Madison -- to say nothing of places like Casper? Sure, the well is deepest in locales such as Northern California, Texas, and the Northeast. The rosters of the corps based in those locales, however, tell a story of nationwide membership, and they've been telling that story for three decades. For better or worse, the era of competitively viable drum corps built on local kids went out with the VFW Nationals.

Every corps needs volunteers. And somehow, every WC corps seems to be able to obtain them, even those whose "local presence" is a storefront office and whose membership base comes from multiple time zones. No WC corps needs an army of locally based volunteers to operate.

And darn few of them have even a single cadet corps, let alone two. Even if the critique that the Rennicks poisoned SCV's relationship with its cadet programs is true {citation needed}, the result (no local feeder corps) is identical to just about every other perennial World Class finalist.

On balance, is a stronger presence in the community preferable to a weaker, or antagonistic one? Of course. Do good relations with music educators in your area make a difference? Certainly. Does it help to have a friendly advocate in your local school district? Boy howdy. Would any drum corps like to come home from Indy with a gold medal and 3 busfulls of local kids and roll down Main Street to a ticker-tape parade? I don't know, let's ask Don Warren.

Am I saying that local relationships don't matter? No; of course they do. The administrators of national enterprises live their lives locally, after all. But in this age of DCI, do "ties with the local community" make or break you? I'm dubious.

 

 

Exactly. Follow the BOA map

[seinphan]

13 minutes ago, scheherazadesghost said:

You are defending folks whose work speaks for itself. Indeed, the alum who marched with the Rennicks are just as worthy of belonging as any other. But the Rennicks don't need defending and should, like everyone else, be subject to criticism. Did they single-handledly cause the fall of Vanguard? No. Of course not. But they were part of the ecosystem and thus, again, open to criticism. Winning may be fun, and we did a lot of that throughout the years. But it's not what defines us... and some of us get scritchy when fans equate the winning with our identity. Doing so denies those of us that didn't win our identity... and feeds short-lived, fair-weather fans who aren't committed to sustaining the organization long-term. It's hardly all on the fans either... but again they're a crucial part of the ecosystem that can make or break sustainability.

And as I hope you can tell, sustaining the organization long-term has now finally reared its ugly head as a critical problem.

Plenty of folks (in this thread alone) are happy to see the Rennicks and our vets in other corps, which also makes me sad. How quickly some of you move on. Rennicks go to Troop. Our vets are being courted by so many corps (as it should be, but it's still sad.) Even I offered that I'd like to see Murray and Jim back but that's a pipe dream coming from a detached alum who knows very little about the nuance that led them to leave and for the corps to ultimately go on hiatus. It wasn't meant to be taken seriously so apologies if I led some to believe otherwise.

And your attempt to play "gotcha" with alum who are still grieving is unbecoming. At a certain point it feels antagonizing... which surely isn't your goal right now, right? Not 36 hours after the news breaks... right?

Alum deserve the space to criticize the whole operation now. I guarantee that it can't be revitalized without us. I certainly welcome pushback from anyone where, but please be respectful to the alum whose shoulders the Rennicks are standing on.

Just a reminder: I didn't bring Paul, Sandy or Michael Gaines into this discussion. I'm just pointing out that it's wrong to single them out in this. They were hired to do a job and they did it. They did it very well. Unless the financial management of SCV is in their contract, thus their responsibility, it might be time to move on from the "blame the percussion writers" phase of this thread.