Penalties

I have a bit of a history with penalties. In 98 we were penalized at prelims because our baritone soloist went on a bit of a stroll towards the stands. He'd been doing it all year, but prelims seemed like a good time to start giving penalties. lol

The most famous incident was in 2005 when we famously trooped the stands at finals and were assessed a penalty that dropped us from 2nd to 3rd place. I've since been told by many sources that it should have been a fine and not a penalty, but it doesn't matter. We know what placement we earned.

Then there's Saturday night: new team, new tradition of penalties. lol We were assessed a 4.2 point penalty. People were in shock (not us...we expected it). They asked "What the hell did you do to get that penalty?", to which my response was "Excessive awesome." I guess DCA people don't have much of a sense of humor, but whatever. I was amused.

In truth, we just didn't do our closer. We only put out 7.5 minutes of show, and DCA decided that this year they weren't going to be lenient at the first show with timing penalties. So be it.

This show was way too early in the year for us to be going out there and really doing anything, much less putting out all of our show. Honestly, we only have 6 or 8 pages left to learn. We could have easily done 9+ minutes of show...maybe even 10, but I wasn't going to do that to the corps. It wasn't ready, I knew it wasn't going to be ready, and I wasn't about to send a young corps out there destined to fail. That would not be fair.

Nothing against the lovely people of Wildwood, but Saturday was not a productive day of drum corps for my corps. Yeah, it's nice to get in front of people, but we needed more time. It's a new corps, young and inexperienced membership...we just needed another week or two to finish pulling things together. So many adjustments, so little time.

Regardless, it's the hand we were dealt. We went, we had our day, we had an okay performance, and we left with a 4.2 penalty. On the positive side, we finally got out there, we did most of the show, everyone had a little bit of an eye opener, and we knew exactly where we stood in our progression. A lot of the staff's points were validated by the judges, and we were pretty armed and ready to go going into Sunday's rehearsal.

It rained in the morning, but we were able to get in the parking garage and do some work on technique and that sort of thing. After lunch, the sun came out and we were on the field in full ensemble. We had a great afternoon, got POINTS better, and are in a really good position going into this weekend...a weekend of nothing but rehearsal.

The plan is to get a lot of the closer out there for the Manassas, VA show. We'll likely not be able to put the entire thing out there, but we'll do our best. We only have so much time. In hindsight, our winter schedule hurt us a bit...and we all know it, so changes for 09 will definitely happen there.

...and that's really the whole thing. We're learning. Everyone in the organization is learning right now. It's exciting, new, and most people seem willing to work extra hard and just have blind faith that this new corps, this new direction, new philosophies are all going to pay off and we're going to be better for the experience.

Saturday taught us that adversity is inevitable. Things are going to be forgotten on show days. We're going to have bad shows sometimes. Things aren't always going to be idea...but we push on. We continue to move the corps forward, because we have direction, we have a vision, and we're on a mission to prove ourselves.

What I'd like to see next is some confidence. I'd like to see some of our younger members get comfortable enough with the show that they start to develop that big, tough, drum corps confidence. It's exciting to watch that develop in people who are new to the activity. Drum corps is where people can come to be badasses. Whether you are one or not in your "normal" life, you are when you're here.

It was a bumpy start to the season, but I've received tons of positive feedback from friends, strangers, fans, and people completely unaffiliated with us at all. I guess there's something in the show that is coming across, even though we're not clean. This weekend we'll move on a little more, and hopefully we roll into Manassas next weekend with little rehearsal time and more than a few parades under our belt, and we throw down for the crowd and have a good show. No matter what, if we get better every time we're at rehearsal...it's going to be a great summer.