These five bands are obviously well deserving of this honor, and I join others in congratulating them.
That said, I wonder, 25 years from now, which bands of today we will be shocked to learn never received this honor. And I wonder how once great bands who earned this accolade but have fallen from the heights look back upon it.
Scrolling through the list of past Sudler Shield recipients, I see that five Ohio bands have been so honored (one of them twice):
1987 -- Federal Hocking
1988 -- Cambridge
1989 -- Grove City
1989 -- Newton
2011 -- William Mason
2022 -- William Mason
In 1987, Federal Hocking, a small school in southeastern Ohio, had appeared a few times at Ohio's state marching band finals -- they would do so eleven times in all, most recently in 2003 -- but had yet to earn a superior rating at that level. (Wikipedia gives the current enrollment as less than 300, and it probably was similar in the 1980s, given that they performed in Class C.) I see nothing to suggest they were among Ohio's 50 best bands at that time, much less the one band deserving of the Sudler Shield in its inaugural year. Had they perhaps been a powerhouse band in the 1970s and awarded based on nostalgia? Federal Hocking's band hasn't competed in at least ten years. The Wikipedia page about Federal Hocking H.S. doesn't even mention the band, much less that they were in the first class to receive this highest honor that can be bestowed on high school marching bands. Do today's students there even know it happened? How does past greatness affect students in once storied programs? Are they better off in ignorance, not being tied down by the weight of tradition they can't match, or could it yet motivate them?
Apart from that selection, the other three early Ohio choices are pretty reasonable, given that the most successful bands in the first ten years of OMEA state finals (1980-89) arguably were:
Cambridge - 10 appearances, 10 superior ratings
Grove City - 10 appearances, 10 superior ratings
Newton - 10 appearances, 9 superior ratings
Marion Local - 10 appearances, 8 superior ratings
Troy - 10 appearances, 8 superior ratings
Hilliard - 9 appearances, 9 superior ratings
Westland - 10 appearances, 7 superior ratings
Fort Recovery - 10 appearances, 6 superior ratings
Newark - 10 appearances, 6 superior ratings
Perkins - 10 appearances, 6 superior ratings
Grove City's selection needs no explanation, I think. They had been one of Ohio's top bands at least since James Swearingen became the director in the early 1970s. Curiously enough, Grove City's director from 1987 to 2013 was George Edge, who had been the director at Newton from 1980 to 1986. He thus surely played a role in two bands achieving this honor. (I'm curious about what other directors that could be said.) Newton's only missed Superior rating came in the first year of state finals, and from 1985 to 1996, the band, whose school was even smaller than Federal Hocking (fewer than 200 students over four grades), earned a superior rating at state while appearing in Class A or (once) Class AA. My band director in 1987 or 1988 made a point of having us watch Newton as a motivator, noting that their school was about one-fourth the size of ours (as we struggled to earn superior ratings at state).
I never did see a full performance by Cambridge in their heyday, which also lasted into the mid-1990s, although I think I saw part of one of their shows in 1991 or 1992 when I was selling programs at state finals. They were an OMEA Class B school who often performed in Class A. In addition, they would occasionally compete in Bands of America events. For instance, they placed tenth in Class A at Grand Nationals in 1993 with a respectable score of 70.95, which at the time was a I rating.
But that should tell us something, because three other Ohio bands, who have never received the Sudler Shield, outranked Cambridge in Class A at that event: New Philadelphia was seventh with a score of 75.40, Marlington was sixth with a score of 76.75, and Bellbrook was fourth with a score of 78.70. And none of those were fluke results.
What changed in the 1990s and 2000s that led to Ohio marching bands as good or better than Cambridge being ignored by the Sousa Foundation? Just working from the list above, for instance, Marion Local, a school of about Federal Hocking's size, would earn a Superior rating at state every year from 1984 to 2008, and would appear as a Class AA thirteen times during that period.
Was it just that they felt they'd paid too much attention to Ohio early on? It can't be simply that the Sudler judges began to discount OMEA standards (although that may have played a part), because there's an elephant that's clearly
not in the room:
How is it that (the very deserving) William Mason has twice won an award that Centerville -- unlike Mason a grand national champion -- didn't receive at all?
