Burning Questions Heading In To The Texas Tour

My vestigial tail needs sunscreen.

The DCI Tour heads to the State of Texas this week. Lots of stuff happened this past Saturday which is going to make things in Tejas way more interesting. Allow me to pose the questions and give you very brief answers because MY TAIL IS ON FIRE!!!

Daniel, the only reason I clicked on this was because my feral brain only cares about predictions.
Okay, that’s not a question. Fine. I’ll start off with that.

- I believe the Blue Devils will finish the Texas Tour still undefeated.
- The literal tie for 12th Place will be broken by the Colts after San Antonio. For now.
- Those gaps between the 5th-7th Place are about to shrink.
- Southwestern Championships uses a double General Effect and double Music Analysis panel. Some of you will be very happy with the results. Some of you will be the opposite and claim that the system is “broken”. I look forward to your petitions on change.org.

Any changes to schedules this week?
Be prepared to have multiple shows move back their start times to avoid melting on the field. The last thing DCI needs is to turn the Kona Ice truck in to a triage center.

Any tips for attending events this week?
- DRINK WATER!!! Sounds silly. It is not. Take care of yourselves.
- Read the event rules for your show. Clear Bag Policy? Mobile Ticket Only?
- Speaking of mobile tickets, bring a backup paper version juuuuuust in case the ticket scanners overheat and cause a massive delay at the gate. No, I’m serious. This happened a few years ago at a show in Texas and about half the crowd missed half the show.
- If your show allows it, bring a towel! If you are unlucky enough to be sitting on a metal bench, the towel will provide some sort of protection.

How do they determine DCI San Antonio performance order? OMG IS CROWN LAST???
- Take the scores from Saturday and rank them straight through.
- Then, group them in (dan) pods of three (1st-3rd, 4th-6th, etc.)
- Finally, the units draw randomly within those groups. For example, Carolina Crown is in the 1st-3rd pod. That means they can either be performing last, second to last, or third to last at San Antonio.
- This is easily the most fair way to determine mid-season performance order since we are grabbing results from different shows.

Dude, where’s my Cavies?
The Cavaliers have had major COVID issues. The good thing is that they are on the mend and are jumping back on tour this week. The bigger question is how DCI is going to handle their performance slot for San Antonio. Per the DCI website:

Order for the DCI Southwestern Championship in San Antonio, Texas (July 23), will be based on reverse order of placement from July 16 events in Denver, Memphis and Whitewater and drawn at random in groups of threes. Corps not appearing in any of those events will be placed in the order based on their last score received.

My statistician friends, who I make buy me lunch, tell me that The Cavaliers haven’t performed since July 6th. Based on that score, they would be drawing within the 13th-15th group. We’ll see if DCI allows them to use their score from tomorrow’s scheduled performance to determine the order for San Antonio.

Happy Hot Texas Tour to you all!!!