Ayala 2019

[srv1084]

Their placement that year has always been a bit puzzling to me. When I saw them earlier in the year I thought they'd be pushing for top 10, but after finishing 12th in prelims they dropped all the way down to 18th in semis, missing finals. We don't typically see movement of more than just a couple placements between rounds, and they were pretty solidly ahead of the 15th place cutoff score after prelims. What has always struck me as odd is how far apart their content and performance scores were across all captions in semis. They were solidly in finals across all but one caption in content scores, but were last (or close to last) in all performance captions, with the biggest spread between content and performance coming in at 12 points. Does anyone know if something went wrong with their performance in semis, like perhaps their soundtrack cut out? 

[Jake W.]

Mar 20, 2022 13:52:24 GMT -6 srv1084 said:

Their placement that year has always been a bit puzzling to me. When I saw them earlier in the year I thought they'd be pushing for top 10, but after finishing 12th in prelims they dropped all the way down to 18th in semis, missing finals. We don't typically see movement of more than just a couple placements between rounds, and they were pretty solidly ahead of the 15th place cutoff score after prelims. What has always struck me as odd is how far apart their content and performance scores were across all captions in semis. They were solidly in finals across all but one caption in content scores, but were last (or close to last) in all performance captions, with the biggest spread between content and performance coming in at 12 points. Does anyone know if something went wrong with their performance in semis, like perhaps their soundtrack cut out? 

I remember this one vividly!! They were still Michael Lentz at this point (I think?) and steadily rising in World Class via design, although performance levels were lagging a touch. Ayala had a solid Prelims performance and I remember thinking, ok, clearly in Finals, but nothing crazy spectacular. I remember thinking that The Woodlands was outstanding (no one expected them to excel as far as they did, and they ended up making their first SW Finalist berth), and that Northview had a bizarre show and was terrific. All good so far.

Semis arrived, and Ayala, to put it delicately, absolutely blew it. Winter activities are so different than marching band in that the unit is immeasurably smaller, and there is no conductor or leader to get the group back on track via emotion or control if something goes wrong. Well, the first few tosses went awry, and the energy spiraled out of control from there --- it was a terrible performance. Drops left and right with zero recovery. The performance jitters sort of spread throughout the group and they ended up receiving a massive drop in points in what is otherwise a semi-consistent judging coalition based on score-seeding from the prior rounds of competition. Rarely does one see a drop so drastic. Honestly, I thought it was a legitimate score --- something that we rarely see with seeded performance order. Just a night and day performance dichotomy from Prelims to Semis, but part of competing at the top is extracting quality from your students at the opportune moments. I was glad to see the scores reward the performance versus content in this case --- Bellbrook rose up to qualify for Finals and deservedly so. It was really an interesting performance that has stuck with me, and underlined what World Class is about...not just excellent performance moments, but consistency in discipline. 

[art]

The recap tells you everything. Higher content scores, low achievement scores. This one unfortunately, as Jake pointed out, is blatantly clear even through numbers. 


recaps.competitionsuite.com/6a848f62-9d99-47ad-98b6-24bc5cb5da89.htm