From the Hop Blog

[Michael]

Breakdowns On and Off the Field

Thursday, June 29, 2006

A Day in the Life of the Cadets

At 6:00 am on the way to Westminster, Maryland, the Cadets’ percussion bus, “9303”, blew an engine seal as it climbed a hill on the way through Maryland.

The bus made it to a rest stop where the admin team moved into action:

- The buses, the food truck and most of the caravan moved on to Westminster, getting the kids in at 8 am and on the floor for three hours.

- Brian Toth, the transportation manager called Tim Gallagher, the transportation manager for the Crossmen, and Tim brought a bus out to the Cadets who were about 90 miles from their school.

- Hopkins directed an off load of equipment from the bus to the Cadets’ equipment truck

- After discussion with Hop, Brian and Tim, arrangements were made with Bernie’s in Allentown to repair the bus.

- Brian arranged a tow at about $2,000 but, the bus will be somewhere, where we know the people and they have some sort of commitment and understanding to us.

- Hopkins had the YEA! search down a rental bus for 2-3 days.

If all goes as planned, the guess at the additional cost is $10,000.00. On the good side, the corps does not have a show this Thursday night, and the general travel pattern over the next week does not involve all too many miles. On the bad side, it is the July 4th weekend and if the repair does not get done by the 1st , it could be a difficult and expensive time.

On Wednesday night in Huntington, WV a bizarre series of events caused the percussion section to “come apart at the seams” for more than 30 seconds during the percussion break. The “breakdown”, according to George Hopkins, “was the worst I have ever witnessed on a drum corps field. At one point, I thought I would have to re-start the corps”.

So what happened …

After the tom feature there is a 4 count hold for applause, after which the red queen says “do they always have to do that”.

The vocal is on count 5. On Tuesday, Marc Sylvester changed it to count 7 and never told anyone.

Now, at the Tuesday night show, with Hopkins at the audio panel, the entrance for the red queen was missed … it never happened. At rehearsal, when the corps works in ensemble, we always stop following the top feature. So … no one knew of the change. Until …. The show in Huntington.

With the voice two counts late, and coming in on count seven, the snares, who face backfield, were not sure of the counting. They were expecting to enter on 1, not 3? Meanwhile the keys followed the major and came in on one. The first snare was two counts late with the voice, the second snare tried to rebound, the third followed the first, the fourth did not play etc …

Unfortunately, this is a 100 count phrase so for 100 counts, it was nothing but a jumble. It was impossible to make sense at all of anything being played.

In the post show meeting with the members, Hopkins referred to it as catastrophic while nothing that things happen, it was in the past, and all we could do was learn from this huge error. The students’ reactions ranged from upset, to anger to confusion. It was indeed, a night to remember.

Interestingly … the corps still was judged to be the victor despite this huge gash. The percussion field guy heard it … indeed, the corps was almost a point out of first in field percussion. But other captions did not mention the debacle, whether they were not sure what they witnessed, or, they just did not know what to say about it.

This will be a performance that we talk about for years much like the 1996 performance at Massillon when 30 members of the horn line fell on one move …Or the 85 finals when one half of the corps entered a count before the other side! Amazing stuff, but kids are kids and live performance is live performance.

It is why we do it.

And why we lose our hair.

The corps is in Westminster on one piece, as of 11:00 am on Thursday.

We have rehearsal from noon to 7 pm and a laundry evening. Friday features rehearsals, a 400 attendee Music is Cool clinic and the YEA! Sponsored Westminster Drum Corps Show.

[Dave]

Already a thread here.