Ten really great rifle lines.

[pmcolorguard]

any year of Cadets!!!

winter guards,,, ummmmm St. Anns any year, especially the all girl years!! Blessed Sac the past few years, and a few of the all girl years. Emerald early 90's, Escapde every year.

[Jim Anello]

Here's a real old one for ya....The Weber Guardsmen...very good rifle line.

Several of whom marched in the 1973 Madison Scouts

[Invader]

1982 Crossmen were a good line.

[Jimbalaya]

Wow......a lot of great memories in this thread. I've had the pleasure of seeing most of the corps listed, but there is one major guard that has been overlooked. It's probably because it predates almost all of those listed, but close to my heart always will be Blue Rock, especially '69 thru '73.

[bradrick]

It will take me a while to come up with my final list of "10". However, any list I'd come up with of really good rifle lines would have to include:

1987 Sky Ryders - one of the best for sure

1987 Santa Clara Vanguard - monsters

1988 Suncoast Sound - just Wow!

1980 Two-Seven

1983 Sky Ryders

and probably 1984 Suncoast and 1986 and 1987 Cavaliers. (Geeze! 87 was a good year for guard. No?)

And I'm thinking maybe 93 Cadets.

Madison Scouts would make the list. Just need to have a DVD marathon to help me decide which year(s).

[Jim Anello]

I'm surprised to see no mention of either the '77 or '78 Kilties. Patti Martell put out some pretty good rifle lines back then.

Edited June 15, 2007 by Jim Anello

[Invader]

Wow......a lot of great memories in this thread. I've had the pleasure of seeing most of the corps listed, but there is one major guard that has been overlooked. It's probably because it predates almost all of those listed, but close to my heart always will be Blue Rock, especially '69 thru '73.

Good one. The've been gon for so long I forgot about them. I always thought Vasella had a good guard as well. Wish we could relive the glory days.

[Will]

I listed my DCI guards, but here are my top winter guard lines -

1992-1994 Escapade

1998 Blue Devils

1996 St Ann's

1987/88 Union High School

1996 Northmont High School (actually, both outdoor and indoor guards from Northmont that year are spectacular!)

2001/2004 Madisonville North Hopkins High School - I know many of you have no idea who they are; they are from Kentucky and probably some of the best rifle lines EVER from KY.

1997 St Ann's

1986 State Street Review (was that the Seasons show??)

[JBro]

Holy old Rifle Lines batman ;o)

Jk jk... I love that old school stuff sometimes ;o)

One of my favorite rifle lines ever is Blue Devils 2001.

A couple of cavalier years (although cavies have always been kind of sloppy in my book).

Cadets 03-04 also awesome.

And NOT that theres video of it... (stupid DCI camera man ZOOMED in during a halt.. and the rifles were all on side 1) but my rifle line in 04 was pretty sweet... If you listen to the judges commentary from the guard judge on the 04 dvd's he goes "Well done gentleman..." Bah! *shakes fist*

[LancerFi]

This sort of ties in with Nancy's comment about Spirit's '80 rifle line. Another rifle line that strikes me in a similar way is an overlooked line: 1981 Garfield Cadets. They executed pretty well, but were also very stylish and did some really cute things (hand positions, body work, etc.), all while maintaining a fair bit of demand on their equipment.

Speaking of stylish . . . I really enjoy Blue Devils' '81 line. Though, to be fair, they were on rifles for what? Half the show? Maybe more. It's hard to tell, given the telecast editing. And I saw them in Louisville that year, but I've destroyed too many brain cells since then to remember a detail like that. The main thing I remember watching was their flag line . . . and I couldn't take my eyes off the new guard uniforms. But I like what they did, and the way they did it.

And yes, '81 27th Lancers . . . good Lord, ladies! You did some blinding, kick-### ####! Sorry, but expletives seem appropriate here. :P

Seriously, Two-Seven's rifle line was so amazing that year, not only with what they did, but how well they did it. I wish I could see the finals performance at Montreal, because I suspect there weren't the drops on a couple of exchanges that happened at Whitewater. (And were the only performance breaks I could see in an extremely difficult show.) I keep wanting to go back and watch the '80 rifle line, though . . . in part because of the red jackets. But I can see why they had the rifle line in the same uniform as the flags in '81; that enabled them to go back and forth from rifle to flag. I realize I'm restating the obvious, but Two-Seven's rifle lines really were state-of-the-art in drum corps. There have been many fine lines before, and since, but for me, they'll always be the epitome of what it means to be a truly great rifle line.

Hi Cutey! I too thought it gave the guard and corps a massive look with the rifles in khaki - sometimes the completely different uniform seemed to stick out a bit too much in places and with such a bright color it wasn't like it could be blended in.

If I remember correctly at finals in Montreal the rifles did wear the red uniform and the exchanges seen in the Whitewater video at the end of concert were taken out. Also Spitfire was replaced by Danny Boy. There were so many changes by the time finals rolled around but the rifle work was ab fab in my opinion.

I don't remember prelims as clearly as finals. Someone else will have to remember for me if the red jackets were worn during the day.