GEM's Crystal Ball: 2022 DCI Week 5 Finals Predictions

A new player has entered the Top 12!

Jul 27, 2022

“Blue Devils.” *Twitter*, 2022, Link. Accessed 26 July 2022

The Concord Blue Devils remain undefeated in 2022 and have stood firmly at the top rankings for the fifth consecutive week. Boston Crusaders, Bluecoats, Carolina Crown, and Santa Clara Vanguard round out the top five, but positions have changed!

GEM writers and contributors were asked to rank the top 15 competing corps, regardless of class, based on where they predicted the corps would end up on Saturday night, August 14, 2022.

Beginning last week, we devised a new system that determines how we aggregate and determine our rankings, similar to how the NCAA publishes top 25 rankings for various collegiate sports. With this system, each corps receives points from voters inverse of placement. More specifically, each corps receives 15 points for each first-place vote, 14 points for each second-place vote, 13 points for each third-place vote, and so on. Rankings are then determined by the total number of points each corps received. 19 voters participated in our rankings this week, so the maximum number of points a corps could receive is 285 (15 points x 19 voters). With this system, votes are appropriately weighted to better aggregate rankings and show variation in how voters voted more easily. For example, if two or more corps score closely in a total number of points, it shows variation by our voters and where they believe that group of corps will end up.

Voters also picked which corps they thought would win each of the five caption performance awards.

1. Blue Devils (84.2% first-place votes; 280 total points)

Previous Ranking: 1 ↔

Blue Devils finished first overall at the DCI Southwestern Championship with a score of 92.175, taking all captions except for Color Guard (2nd) and Percussion (3rd).

“Boston Crusaders.” *Twitter*, 2022, Link. Accessed 26 July 2022

2. Boston Crusaders (5.3% first-place votes; 265 total points)

Previous Ranking: 4 ↑

Boston Crusaders finished first overall at DCI Corpus Christi with a score of 91.800, taking all captions.

“Carolina Crown.” *Facebook*, 2022, Link. Accessed 26 July 2022

3. Carolina Crown (5.3% first-place votes; 242 total points)

Previous Ranking: 2 ↓

Carolina Crown finished first overall at DCI Mesquite with a score of 90.550, taking all captions.

“Bluecoats.” *Twitter*, 2022, Link. Accessed 26 July 2022

4. Bluecoats (5.3% first-place votes; 239 total points)

Previous Ranking: 3 ↓

Bluecoats finished fourth overall at the DCI Southwestern Championship with a score of 89.900 and placed third in Visual.

“Santa Clara Vanguard.” *Facebook*, 2022, Link. Accessed 26 July 2022

5. Santa Clara Vanguard (204 total points)

Previous Ranking: 5 ↔

Santa Clara Vanguard finished fifth overall at the DCI Southwestern Championship with a score of 88.750. The four-time defending winner of the Fred Sanford Best Percussion Performance Award, SCV took the Percussion caption over Boston Crusaders by .100.