It's time to wake up this Open Class Forum!

[BigW]

Southwind doesn't really read as small, but I'm used to smaller DCA teams, I think.

 

Southwind's quite good. The real revelation at Dover were the Spartans. WHOA!

[cmchandler]

On 7/3/2023 at 10:27 PM, mjyaub said:

At one time I had high hopes for Southwind. They had a much larger corps pre-Covid with a horn line that was turning heads.  This is just my observation so anyone in the know please correct me.  It seems logistically the Gulf Coast corps with the exception of Texas has a harder go at filling the ranks.  One corps already disappeared anonymously.  I hope the others don’t follow suit.

Just gonna chime in here and say Southwind has no long term plans to make any jump to world class. We prefer being a corps that educates the basics for music and marching (and to create better humans).

[cmchandler]

On 7/5/2023 at 11:55 AM, JD73 said:

In the early and mid nineties what is now called open class had over 100 corps competing. 

When I marched with Southwind in 1990, we were A60 and woke up to perform prelims at 4 a.m. (in the pouring rain) because of the sheer number of A and A60 corps in Buffalo that year. It was WILD.

[BigW]

15 hours ago, cmchandler said:

Just gonna chime in here and say Southwind has no long term plans to make any jump to world class. We prefer being a corps that educates the basics for music and marching (and to create better humans).

As a compliment, they do more than just the basics. The show this year is very well designed. Perhaps not overwrought or overthought, but everything is well staged, paced, and coordinated. A lot of HS groups could learn a lot from dissecting this show carefully and thoughtfully.

 

Many corps have certain goals, and not wanting to be in World Class is absolutely fine. Dreams of that kind of grandeur killed the Garden State Circuit 30 years ago and left us with only Surf and Raiders who had the budget and management infrastructure to be able to tour outside that circuit. Building character is an admirable goal. When I was trying to get up the stadium steps last fall at the Circuit championship and was struggling (relapse of my issues in August, hospitalized later that week, I'm fine now!) to get up the steps, several members of one band offered to help me. I sent them a thank you card with a note stating that character matters and that their organization obviously had members of strong character in it. If Southwind's goals are part of that, that's fantastic. Keep doing it!

[cmchandler]

6 hours ago, BigW said:

As a compliment, they do more than just the basics. The show this year is very well designed. Perhaps not overwrought or overthought, but everything is well staged, paced, and coordinated. A lot of HS groups could learn a lot from dissecting this show carefully and thoughtfully.

 

Many corps have certain goals, and not wanting to be in World Class is absolutely fine. Dreams of that kind of grandeur killed the Garden State Circuit 30 years ago and left us with only Surf and Raiders who had the budget and management infrastructure to be able to tour outside that circuit. Building character is an admirable goal. When I was trying to get up the stadium steps last fall at the Circuit championship and was struggling (relapse of my issues in August, hospitalized later that week, I'm fine now!) to get up the steps, several members of one band offered to help me. I sent them a thank you card with a note stating that character matters and that their organization obviously had members of strong character in it. If Southwind's goals are part of that, that's fantastic. Keep doing it!

Thank you for the kind words. And I hope I didn't leave the impression I'm diminishing anything our design team and members are doing. They are all so amazing, and they work really hard to create what you see. It's just, as a philosophy, we choose to focus more on education than competition as we believe it leads to the rewards you seek anyway. Compete with yourself, be a better you and a better team member, and the rewards will come (both during the season and beyond).