UIL Area Scoring Explanation
Well, Region is now entirely complete, so we look to the next step in the path to the UIL State Marching Contest: Area. The system UIL uses is very confusing, especially to those outside of Texas, as the ordinal system style of judging is virtually non-existent outside the UIL circuit. We could go on a whole history lesson on why the sheets are like how they are, but that would take too long. TL;DR is that Texas is massive, and there are varying philosophies of what marching band is (i.e., Military style in East Texas), so UIL needed to find a way to have all styles compete fairly with each other.
The ordinal system that UIL settled on is pretty basic on closer inspection, the judge gives every band a score (1-1000), and that score gets assigned an ordinal based on how it ranks to everyone else. Now do that with three music judges and two visual judges, add all the ordinals together, and the band with the lowest total score wins. This can be easily seen by looking at the results sheets from last year:
The three Music Judges all have the same sheets, and both Visual/Marching Judges also have the same sheets, and all five Judges are sitting in the box or at the top of the stands; there are no field judges at Area. Simple enough, right? Well, if you go to the UIL website now and try to look at this year’s recaps, you’ll see a lot more numbers. The judging sheets have not changed, just the amount of detail UIL is giving to us publicly.
So now we can see that every Music Judge gives a score for Ensemble (250), Woodwinds (200), Brass (200), Percussion (200), and Content (150) while the Visual/Marching Judges give scores for Individual (300), Ensemble (400), and Content (300). You may look at this and think this system is flawed because it lacks field judges or doesn’t take into account things like General Effect, which is a prevalent part in virtually every other pageantry circuit in the country. You, my friend, would not be the first to raise those questions, thus the transition to a new judging system at the State level in 6A and 5A (and likely soon to be 4A following the most recent UIL Legislative Session). We will cover that judging system as we get closer to State, but for now remember that the Area judging system is the same regardless of what system will be used at the respective class’s State Marching Contest.
Alright now that we have a grasp on how Area is judged, let’s talk about who makes finals, who goes to state, and how the number of bands who do so is determined. The basics are that every Area takes a minimum number of bands to State regardless of how many qualify for Area, and that is a minimum of two for 6A and 5A, and a minimum of three for 4A, 3A, and 2A. More than the minimum can go to State, and that is based on every five bands that qualify starting at 15 and going up. The number of bands that make finals can also vary, with right now the numbers being 14 and under means no finals, 15-19 mean seven go to finals, 20-29 mean ten go to finals, and 30-39 mean twelve go to finals.
So for a hypothetical, let’s say 7A Area Y (this does not exist) has 32 varsity bands in total from the various Regions that make it up. If only two bands fail to get a 1 at Region, then there are 30 total bands who qualify, which means twelve bands get to perform in finals and the top six in finals will advance to State. Now let’s say three band failed to qualify, which makes it a total of 29 instead of 30. This now drops the 7A Area Y down to ten finals spots and the top five in finals advancing to State. Let’s go back to the first scenario with 30 bands qualifying and assume two have opted to not attend the Area Contest, which means only 28 bands are competing. This does NOT change the amount of bands who go to finals or qualify for State as the numbers are based on who qualifies, not who attends.
There are various reasons a band program may decide to not attend Area. The first (and most common) reason a band may not attend Area is if they they are a Military-style band because they have the option to go to the Military State Marching Contest as opposed to the Open Class track that most bands in the state favor. We can see this effect most drastically this year in 4A Area C, where 28 bands qualified (which means ten finalists and five state qualifiers), but only 14 are actually competing on Saturday. The next most common reason for not going to Area is that it is not a State year, which was most noticeable in 5A Area H this year, with #15 Cedar Park (TX), Rouse (TX), and Leander (TX) all not attending. The final and rarest scenario is a band skipping Area on a State year, usually as a way to save time and/or money for other plans the program may have in the near future. This year, Moe and Gene Johnson (TX) is doing this to save time for their trip to BOA Grand Nationals and will be attending BOA Waco as opposed to 6A Area D this Saturday. Again, regardless of why a band chooses to not attend, this does not affect the number of Finals and State spots in the Area.
Now that we’ve covered the all the technicalities and exceptions, let’s visualize it by looking at some more recaps:
As you can see, we have the DNA (Did Not Attend) Bands 1-11 bringing the total up to 25, advancing ten of the fourteen bands to Finals, and five of those top ten to State.
Alright, that covers just about everything you need to know about Area! Stay tuned later this week for articles previewing the upcoming contests along with a little something extra for 6A…
Aaron Blackley is one of the original contributors for General Effect Media. Despite being young and fresh out of college, he has a vast knowledge and passion for the marching arts and has worked alongside the likes of HornRank as a ranker and moderator as well as the TxBands.com liveblog team since summer 2021. He can be found on Twitter as @GEMAaronB.