Recap Rundown: 6/24-7/2
Competition in DCI is back! Recapping scores and highlights from the first 10 days of the season
Hello and welcome to the first edition of Recap Rundown! In this weekly article, we’ll take a look at scores and recaps from the previous week’s shows as well as trends and rankings as the season progresses. Feel free to follow along with this interactive dashboard powered by Google Data Studio. Here, you can find a number of tables and charts that break down the season’s scores by a number of metrics such as shows, corps, class, date, and even caption scores. Below is a preview of the rankings page from the dashboard.
Let’s dive in!
The beginning of the first competitive DCI season since 2019 saw a bit of a different start than recent years with the season kicking off in California with three shows in consecutive nights. Santa Clara Vanguard kicked things off with their first win of the season at Corps at the Crest San Diego, finishing with a 69.95. The biggest surprise of the night though belonged to Mandarins, who finished second with a 65.3, a little over 4.5 points behind Vanguard. While this score was slightly lower than their opening score in the 2019 season, the spread behind Vanguard was the closest the Mandarins had ever placed behind their NorCal neighbors in corps history. Mandarins followed up their impressive debut with similar showings at Drum Corps at the Rose Bowl and Western Connection, reaching a 67.65 by weekend’s end and only 4.2 points behind SCV’s 71.85.
Blue Devils made their season debut at the Rose Bowl and in their first live performance in nearly three years, picked up right from where they left off following their 2019 championship season. After debuting with a 72.3, the corps shot up nearly a point and a half in one night, finishing with a 73.5 at Western Corps Connection while sweeping all sub captions and finishing 1.65 ahead of Vanguard.
Six more World Class corps made their season debut on Tuesday night at the annual DCI Tour Premiere event in Detroit, ending with a victory by Bluecoats with a 71.7. This win was the corps’ fifth consecutive victory at the DCI Tour Premiere event and their 2.25 spread over Boston Crusaders was also the largest spread during the five year streak. Bluecoats also swept all captions and sub captions, even defeating Boston’s color guard who are the defending 2019 George Zingali Best Color Guard Award winners. Further down the score sheet, the closest battle of the night belonged to Phantom Regiment and Blue Stars with a mere 0.6 separating the two corps. Regiment came out on top, finishing with a 65.75 and beating Blue Stars for the first time since finals night in 2017.
After two days with no shows, competition returned on Friday in Muncie featuring four corps from the Detroit show and the debuts of Carolina Crown and Colts. Crown came away victorious with their fifth win in Muncie over the past decade, and a score of 73.45, their highest opening score since the 2011 season. Elsewhere, Phantom Regiment again edged out Blue Stars and Crossmen placed above Colts by 0.8.
The week concluded with the first multi-show night of the season with four contests in Massachusetts, Ohio, Wisconsin, and Arizona. The show at Kent State University in Ohio featured the first matchup of the season between Bluecoats and Crown, where Crown won their second show in as many nights and beat Bluecoats for the first time since finals night in 2017. Crown greatly benefited from a 0.3 spread in the General Effect caption and a 0.2 spread in the Music caption, while Bluecoats took Visual by a mere 0.05 thanks to wins in the Visual Proficiency and Visual Analysis sub captions. Early in the season, it appears the two corps may be battling all season for a top 3 finish and things will only get more interesting once Blue Devils are thrown in the mix. Unfortunately, all three corps won’t match up with each other until the July 19th show in Broken Arrow, OK.
After a lengthy weather delay, five more corps made their season debuts on Saturday night in Qunicy, MA including Cadets and the defending 2019 Open Class champions, Spartans. Boston Crusaders came away victorious in their second show of the season with a 3.75 point victory, continuing their early case for a top 4 ranking. In Madison, WI, Cavaliers won their first show of the season, Blue Stars broke 70 and shot up to a 7th place ranking, and Madison Scouts made their 2022 debut by placing only 1.35 behind Colts. To close the evening, the west coast corps performed for the first time in six days in Tempe, AZ and welcomed Blue Knights as they opened their season with 66.7.
Open Class competition is already beginning to heat up early with seven corps making their debuts throughout the past week. Gold started off the season with three impressive showings in California, reaching a peak score of 56.35, until Spartans made an early case for defending their 2019 title with a 58.3 in Quincy. Further down the rankings River City Rhythm, Colt Cadets, Golden Empire, and 7th Regiment all scored within two points of each other in what may be an intriguing battle for the lower half of Open Class finals placements come August.
That does it for last week! After a day off of competitions to allow corps to participate in 4th of July parades, competition resumes tomorrow in Fresno, CA. In total, 14 competitions will take place in 10 different states, including three shows last night that will be recapped next week. In the upcoming week, we’ll also see the debut of Troopers and a number of Open Class corps, as well as the first matchup of the season between Crown and Boston Crusaders on Saturday in South Carolina.
Until next time!
