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Post by thewho on Aug 12, 2021 23:57:06 GMT -6
Forgive me if I’m wrong but isn’t it sort of a risk for a lot of the bands from out west to actively prioritize the BOA circuit instead of more local ones? Just in the terms of costs and travel. I’m talking about bands like Ayala, Vista Murrieta, Homestead, Winston-Salem etc etc especially when it’s known they spend a lot to go to nationals with much less of a guarantee of making finals. It must be a very costly decision to prioritize BOA especially when there aren’t that many contests nearby. I hear good things about bands like Grants Pass and James Logan but they seem to not care much for BOA at all and focus on local circuits. The other “Out Of Nowhere” bands don’t seem to have an alternative to BOA (Clovis + American Fork) it just seems that they’ve for lack of a better term “Outgrown” their circuits It 100% is. hostrauser can explain the intricacies between WBA and BOA better than I would, but the gist of it is while similar, there are enough differences the circuits for WBA bands to get held back a bit more show design-wise. While BOA evolved in the Midwest (and Texas later on) prominently, the same like-minded people out in California grew in a different direction. Heck, even NorCal and Socal band cultures/philosophy are two totally different things completely. Also, BOA has loooooong struggled with securing venues out West. I have never seen them be able to secure a venue in California up until a month before the regional starts. In some cases, the location of the site is awful enough that some bands that might've thought about it noped out (Bakersfield). It's pretty impressive the extent Ayala and VM go to participate in BOA despite the lack of star treatment in California. I'm actually pretty intrigued with the recent formation of UMEA and the prospects of the activity in Utah. The sheets seems to suggest a strong BOA influence and the St. George enrollment have been seeing more and more interest from Utah bands dipping in their toes in BOA waters for the first time. American Fork is obviously a massive anomaly and they'll probably sit on the top for the longest time, but there seems to be a promising sign of future contention soon, barring Covid.
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Post by hostrauser on Aug 13, 2021 8:59:43 GMT -6
The WBA (and the NWAPA in the Pacific NW) are heavily drum corps influenced, and both guard and percussion are individual captions that add to the total score. In a way this makes sense: California has long had a lot of drum corps, and partially because of this California schools have long had terrific drum lines and color guards (look at the variety of schools from CA that have taken medals at WGI). Ayala has one of the best high school percussion sections in the nation... and they aren't even the best drumline in their DISTRICT (Chino Hills has been beating them for years now). Scoring in the WBA is 30.0 Effect (30 Mus + 30 Vis / 2), 30.0 Music (30 Ind + 30 Ens / 2), 20.0 Visual (20 Ind + 20 Ens / 2), 10.0 auxiliary (20 / 2), and 10.0 percussion (20 /2). With 20% of the total score going to guard and percussion, this doesn't always translate well to BOA, especially in Indy's dome (Ayala definitely had balance problems their first trip or two back to Grand Nationals). It also creates WBA's biggest flaw (in my opinion): there are some... well, mediocre actual bands that score very, very well in WBA because they have awesome percussion and auxiliary.
The venue issue is definitely a big problem in California, and not just for BOA. California college stadiums often hold a LOT of extracurricular events (so the schedule fills up quick) and I believe they charge a higher going rate than most other areas of the country. Bakersfield College is actually a great stadium for a field show... but it's in Bakersfield. The worst venue (I'm told) was West Valley H.S. in Hemet a couple of years in the 00s/10s.
But really, the biggest roadblock for BOA out West is money. I am consistently amazed at how good the California high school bands actually are considering almost all of them get zero financial or administrative support. Mark Stone (Ayala's now retired former director) told me that the school gave him $500 a year to budget for the marching band. No zeros are missing from that number. And this was from a district and administration that is one of the most supportive of music in the entire state. EVERYTHING: show design, entry fees, instruments, busses, uniforms, instructors... must be raised and paid for by the students and band boosters. Ten years ago, an Ayala band parent told me the marching dues for the season were around $1,500 per kid. That's just for marching band. More dues for winter guard and winter percussion. This is true for just about every school in the entire state. California bands are on their own.
I did some rough calculations a few years back and figured for a band the size of an Ayala or Vista Murrieta (200-220 kids), it costs them $250,000 to $300,000 EXTRA (on top of their normal season budget) to make a trip to Grand Nationals. And if you're not a heavy hitter? I had multiple NorCal band directors tell me they LOVED the feedback they got from BOA judges, the tapes were some of the best they received in their career, but when you spend every year scraping for each penny, it doesn't make sense to pay $850 to attend a BOA regional when you can attend two or three local shows for the same amount of entry fee money.
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Post by boahistorybuff on Aug 13, 2021 11:28:13 GMT -6
I will point out that in the 1970s many high school band programs started adopting a corps style program. The biggest differences among those corps style programs was how much traditional elements each individual band held on to and not so much what region of the country these bands came from. The parts of the country that were among the earliest to see this transformation were central/northern California, the Midwest and the Northeast/Mid Atlantic (and to a lessor extent the Southeast). Remember, the first band to win the Grand National title in 1976 was in fact a California band. All of those band programs were influenced heavily by trends in drum corps. Marching Bands of America (which is what Bands of America was known as in the early days) held their first BOA Regional out west in 1979 in Moscow ID (the second year of fall regionals). Perhaps ease of venue site justified this remote locations. In 1980, MBA expanded the fall regionals to 8 (two of which were held out west, one in Moscow, ID and the other in Clovis, CA). I suspect they had hopes of truly making MBA a nationwide circuit. In 1981, however, they scaled back the number of regionals to four and held no regionals in the western US. In fact after 1980 they only held a western regional in 85,86 and 88, although western bands did frequent the Summer Nationals of the 1980s. I have a suspicion that in 1980 perhaps MBA over extended themselves financially and had to scale things back in 1981. It was during the 1980s and into the 1990s where regional differences among the ever growing number of bands doing corps style really seemed to take hold.
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Post by marimba11 on Aug 13, 2021 21:24:48 GMT -6
The WBA (and the NWAPA in the Pacific NW) are heavily drum corps influenced, and both guard and percussion are individual captions that add to the total score. In a way this makes sense: California has long had a lot of drum corps, and partially because of this California schools have long had terrific drum lines and color guards (look at the variety of schools from CA that have taken medals at WGI). Ayala has one of the best high school percussion sections in the nation... and they aren't even the best drumline in their DISTRICT (Chino Hills has been beating them for years now). Scoring in the WBA is 30.0 Effect (30 Mus + 30 Vis / 2), 30.0 Music (30 Ind + 30 Ens / 2), 20.0 Visual (20 Ind + 20 Ens / 2), 10.0 auxiliary (20 / 2), and 10.0 percussion (20 /2). With 20% of the total score going to guard and percussion, this doesn't always translate well to BOA, especially in Indy's dome (Ayala definitely had balance problems their first trip or two back to Grand Nationals). It also creates WBA's biggest flaw (in my opinion): there are some... well, mediocre actual bands that score very, very well in WBA because they have awesome percussion and auxiliary. The venue issue is definitely a big problem in California, and not just for BOA. California college stadiums often hold a LOT of extracurricular events (so the schedule fills up quick) and I believe they charge a higher going rate than most other areas of the country. Bakersfield College is actually a great stadium for a field show... but it's in Bakersfield. The worst venue (I'm told) was West Valley H.S. in Hemet a couple of years in the 00s/10s. But really, the biggest roadblock for BOA out West is money. I am consistently amazed at how good the California high school bands actually are considering almost all of them get zero financial or administrative support. Mark Stone (Ayala's now retired former director) told me that the school gave him $500 a year to budget for the marching band. No zeros are missing from that number. And this was from a district and administration that is one of the most supportive of music in the entire state. EVERYTHING: show design, entry fees, instruments, busses, uniforms, instructors... must be raised and paid for by the students and band boosters. Ten years ago, an Ayala band parent told me the marching dues for the season were around $1,500 per kid. That's just for marching band. More dues for winter guard and winter percussion. This is true for just about every school in the entire state. California bands are on their own. I did some rough calculations a few years back and figured for a band the size of an Ayala or Vista Murrieta (200-220 kids), it costs them $250,000 to $300,000 EXTRA (on top of their normal season budget) to make a trip to Grand Nationals. And if you're not a heavy hitter? I had multiple NorCal band directors tell me they LOVED the feedback they got from BOA judges, the tapes were some of the best they received in their career, but when you spend every year scraping for each penny, it doesn't make sense to pay $850 to attend a BOA regional when you can attend two or three local shows for the same amount of entry fee money. Mark Stone is a great guy. Honestly amazing what he was able to do with only $500! Obviously it took more than that but that is some real dedication to the activity. I hope Ayala has many years of continuing success to build on what he created. I think the whole thing with the West is everything is just so far and cities are so spread out.
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Post by hostrauser on Aug 14, 2021 22:52:07 GMT -6
Mark Stone is a great guy. Honestly amazing what he was able to do with only $500! Obviously it took more than that but that is some real dedication to the activity. I hope Ayala has many years of continuing success to build on what he created. I think the whole thing with the West is everything is just so far and cities are so spread out. The West is so massive, it's hard to comprehend unless you've traveled through it or lived there. The two factoids I use to highlight how big Texas and the West are: * El Paso, TX is 1 mile closer to San Diego, CA (three states away) than it is to Houston in the same state. * When we moved from San Diego, CA to Milwaukee, WI, the first three days of travel only got us to Colorado Springs, and the last two days of travel got us the rest of the way to Milwaukee. 1: CA->AZ 2: AZ->NM 3: NM->CO 4: CO->KS->MO 5. MO->IA->IL->WI
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Post by Allohak on Aug 15, 2021 6:28:18 GMT -6
Mark Stone is a great guy. Honestly amazing what he was able to do with only $500! Obviously it took more than that but that is some real dedication to the activity. I hope Ayala has many years of continuing success to build on what he created. I think the whole thing with the West is everything is just so far and cities are so spread out. The West is so massive, it's hard to comprehend unless you've traveled through it or lived there. The two factoids I use to highlight how big Texas and the West are: * El Paso, TX is 1 mile closer to San Diego, CA (three states away) than it is to Houston in the same state. * When we moved from San Diego, CA to Milwaukee, WI, the first three days of travel only got us to Colorado Springs, and the last two days of travel got us the rest of the way to Milwaukee. 1: CA->AZ 2: AZ->NM 3: NM->CO 4: CO->KS->MO 5. MO->IA->IL->WI Sounds like good reason to never move west of the Mississippi. From where I live, I can get anywhere from Quebec to Miami to San Antonio to Denver to Fargo...and it's 1 travel day or less, without lacking for rest.
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Post by LeanderMomma on Aug 15, 2021 7:36:18 GMT -6
I like it west of the Mississippi just fine but it is very different traveling west versus east. Both are extremely interesting though. We live in a beautiful country.
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CTJBandPops
Full Member
children are apt to live up to what you believe of them - Claudia Taylor "Lady Bird" Johnson
Posts: 25
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Post by CTJBandPops on Aug 16, 2021 3:31:50 GMT -6
The WBA (and the NWAPA in the Pacific NW) are heavily drum corps influenced, and both guard and percussion are individual captions that add to the total score. In a way this makes sense: California has long had a lot of drum corps, and partially because of this California schools have long had terrific drum lines and color guards (look at the variety of schools from CA that have taken medals at WGI). Ayala has one of the best high school percussion sections in the nation... and they aren't even the best drumline in their DISTRICT (Chino Hills has been beating them for years now). Scoring in the WBA is 30.0 Effect (30 Mus + 30 Vis / 2), 30.0 Music (30 Ind + 30 Ens / 2), 20.0 Visual (20 Ind + 20 Ens / 2), 10.0 auxiliary (20 / 2), and 10.0 percussion (20 /2). With 20% of the total score going to guard and percussion, this doesn't always translate well to BOA, especially in Indy's dome (Ayala definitely had balance problems their first trip or two back to Grand Nationals). It also creates WBA's biggest flaw (in my opinion): there are some... well, mediocre actual bands that score very, very well in WBA because they have awesome percussion and auxiliary. The venue issue is definitely a big problem in California, and not just for BOA. California college stadiums often hold a LOT of extracurricular events (so the schedule fills up quick) and I believe they charge a higher going rate than most other areas of the country. Bakersfield College is actually a great stadium for a field show... but it's in Bakersfield. The worst venue (I'm told) was West Valley H.S. in Hemet a couple of years in the 00s/10s. But really, the biggest roadblock for BOA out West is money. I am consistently amazed at how good the California high school bands actually are considering almost all of them get zero financial or administrative support. Mark Stone (Ayala's now retired former director) told me that the school gave him $500 a year to budget for the marching band. No zeros are missing from that number. And this was from a district and administration that is one of the most supportive of music in the entire state. EVERYTHING: show design, entry fees, instruments, busses, uniforms, instructors... must be raised and paid for by the students and band boosters. Ten years ago, an Ayala band parent told me the marching dues for the season were around $1,500 per kid. That's just for marching band. More dues for winter guard and winter percussion. This is true for just about every school in the entire state. California bands are on their own. I did some rough calculations a few years back and figured for a band the size of an Ayala or Vista Murrieta (200-220 kids), it costs them $250,000 to $300,000 EXTRA (on top of their normal season budget) to make a trip to Grand Nationals. And if you're not a heavy hitter? I had multiple NorCal band directors tell me they LOVED the feedback they got from BOA judges, the tapes were some of the best they received in their career, but when you spend every year scraping for each penny, it doesn't make sense to pay $850 to attend a BOA regional when you can attend two or three local shows for the same amount of entry fee money.
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Post by Uncle Baby Billy on Aug 16, 2021 13:45:14 GMT -6
Well, that's because you were moving and likely hauling a bunch of items. You should be able to make it to Colorado Springs in half of the time otherwise. Easily, Vegas to Denver in ONE day max. Not even. The West is so massive, it's hard to comprehend unless you've traveled through it or lived there. The two factoids I use to highlight how big Texas and the West are: * El Paso, TX is 1 mile closer to San Diego, CA (three states away) than it is to Houston in the same state. * When we moved from San Diego, CA to Milwaukee, WI, the first three days of travel only got us to Colorado Springs, and the last two days of travel got us the rest of the way to Milwaukee. 1: CA->AZ 2: AZ->NM 3: NM->CO 4: CO->KS->MO 5. MO->IA->IL->WI Sounds like good reason to never move west of the Mississippi. From where I live, I can get anywhere from Quebec to Miami to San Antonio to Denver to Fargo...and it's 1 travel day or less, without lacking for rest.
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Post by hostrauser on Aug 16, 2021 14:38:11 GMT -6
Well, that's because you were moving and likely hauling a bunch of items. You should be able to make it to Colorado Springs in half of the time otherwise. Easily, Vegas to Denver in ONE day max. Not even. You are missing the point. It was 1,233 miles (with mountain travel) from San Diego to Colorado Springs but only 1,167 miles of plains travel from Colorado Springs to Milwaukee. Also, Vegas to Denver is 750 miles and almost 11 hours. I'm too old to put in that much time on the road in a single day any more.
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